The Dead Season

During a sweltering August in Florence, Sandro Cellini looks for pregnant Anna Niescu’s missing banker fiancé, in British author Kent’s excellent third novel featuring the Italian PI (after 2011’s A Murder in Tuscany). A corpse that surfaces with the same name as Anna’s fiancé turns out to be the wrong man. Instead, Cellini discovers, their quarry is unwittingly entangled in schemes that have forced him underground for safety. As the investigation of disappearance and murder circles the city’s changing landscape, a trio of strong, idiosyncratic women—Cellini’s cancer-survivor wife, Luisa; his assistant, Guili Sarto; and quirky bank teller Roxana Delfino—help him rediscover lost connections. Kent brings her characters to rich and convincing life amid story lines full of subtlety and surprise. Florence, too, springs vividly from the page, evoked with sharp observation and an admirable absence of cliché. Kent’s reputation as a writer of smart, atmospheric mysteries with literary as well as genre appeal should continue to grow. Agent: Nathaniel Jacks, Inkwell Management. (Nov.)