Best Served Cold
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Revenge is a dish best served cold
When an old college friend leading a religious tour in Assisi asks interpreter Rick Montoya to fill in for their guide who's gone missing, Rick is happy to oblige. He's looking forward to seeing his old friend, and the food and wine of Umbria sound like the perfect reward for a tense translation job he's just completed for the police in Palermo involving witness testimony against the mafia.
But when the shady tour guide is found dead the next morning under suspicious circumstances, Rick's relaxing gig turns into an unofficial job assisting the local police inspector with her interviews of the tour group members. Could one of the pious pilgrims be a cold-blooded killer? Or has one of the victim's many shady dealings finally caught up with him?
For fans of Martin Walker and Donna Leon, BEST SERVED COLD takes readers on a delicious excursion through the Umbrian hills as Rick leads his tour—and the police investigation—to a killer conclusion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wagner again puts his years as an Italian diplomat to good use in his excellent eighth whodunit (following 2020's To Die in Tuscany) featuring translator-turned-sleuth Rick Montoya. Montoya, a New Mexico native living in Rome, is hired by the Palermo police to transcribe the interrogation of an organized crime turncoat for the FBI, who are hoping to use it to take down an American mafioso. The assignment coincides with a request from Zeke Campbell, Montoya's former fraternity brother, who's become a priest and is leading a religious tour in Italy. When the group's local guide disappears, Campbell asks Montoya to fill in; before long, the guide turns up dead, and Montoya begins investigating, uncovering evidence that the man was less innocent than he appeared. Wagner juggles plotlines adeptly, and further deepens the relationship between Montoya and his love interest Betta Innocenti, an art fraud investigator. Montoya's adventures have yet to lose their shine.
