Rick Montoya has moved from New Mexico to Rome, embracing the life of a translator. He’s settling in to la dolce vita when a school friend who is now senior in the Italian Art Squad recruits Rick for an unofficial undercover role. Armed with a list of galleries, suspects, and an expense account, Rick would arrive in Tuscany posing as a buyer for a Santa Fe gallery and flush out burial urn … urn traffickers.
But before sunset on Rick’s first day in Volterra, a gallery employee dies in a brutal fall from a high cliff.
The local Commissario and his team consider Rick an amateur, and worse, a foreigner. And now they suspect him in the dead man’s murder. While the Volterra squad pursues its leads, Rick continues to interview his list: a museum director, a top gallery owner, a low-profile import/export businessman and his enterprising color-coordinated assistant, and a sensuous heiress with a private art specialty and clientele.
When Rick’s girlfriend Erica arrives from Rome to visit him, she rekindles a friendship with an alluring, maybe dangerous, acquaintance. Has Rick’s role made him the target of both cops and criminals?
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this book dragged! Really had to force myself to read it to the end. Last few chapters really moved finally!
The only action was in last ten pages of book. Long and boring.
Enjoyed the Italian piece but was disappointed with the abrupt ending.
If you are interested in Italian art and artifacts, Italian history and culture, Italian food and wine, or even just good storytelling, then COLD TUSCAN STONE — the first in what will hopefully become a series of Rick Montoya Italian mysteries — will be right up your cobblestone alleyway… this exciting, intriguing, well-written mystery extends an offer no reader should refuse. Capiche?
David P. Wagner gives us a compelling new character in a setting so romantic and redolent of history it pulls us in immediately and holds us until the surprising ending… This is a wonderful start to a series, which should have immediate legs, and surely will thrill everyone who has lived in Italy, been to Italy, or would like to visit. As a boy I lived in both Firenze and Napoli, and reading Wagner takes me back deeply and instantly.