Murder Returns to Gravigna

Old grudges and complicated romantic histories abound when the town butcher is found dead in Camilla Trinchieri’s final Tuscan mystery.

Big changes are coming to Gravigna, the Italian village ex-NYPD officer Nico Doyle now calls home, and not all of them are welcome. When Sergio Macchi is found dead in his butcher shop, stabbed with his favorite knife, the whole town is affected. The locals gather to commemorate Macchi by drinking grappa, but the cheers soon turn into ugly accusations as people begin to point fingers at his young French wife, Delphine, who has conveniently left Italy with her son for the Easter holiday.

Delphine asks Maresciallo Perillo to get Nico involved in the investigation, as Macchi respected him. Perillo, who is growing tired of his job, welcomes the help, but Nico struggles to work on a case that hits so close to home and embraces his time cooking with Tilde at Sotto Il Fico, where he is at peace.

In addition to owning the butcher shop, Macchi owned several other buildings in town, and it isn’t long before Nico learns the murdered man had just informed his tenants—Gino, who runs the trattoria; Luciana, the florist; Oreste, the barber; and the vintner, Piero Leonardi—that he was raising their rent by 15 percent, news that surely wouldn’t have been welcome. Could that have been enough to get him killed? As the investigation simmers, tensions with Nico’s partner, Nelli, bubble to the surface: He wants to remarry, but still haunted by her failed first marriage, she isn’t so sure. Nico struggles to balance the demands of the investigation with his personal affairs in this rich and rewarding conclusion to the Tuscan Mystery series.