A Deadly Paradise

March 3, 2008
In Brophy's appealing if low-key second mystery to feature Insp. Alessandro Cenni (after 2007's The Last Enemy
), the murder of Jarvinia Baudler in the Italian village of Paradiso creates a headache for German diplomat Dieter Reimann, who had been having an affair with the woman. Reimann's need to recover important papers muddies the waters for the inspector, who discovers that the victim was a bisexual drunk who used Reimann to falsify passports, lived beyond her means and was the recipient of threatening letters. As Cenni sifts through all this intriguing information about the deceased, he comes across a link to unsolved murders from 1978 and possible blackmail involving Reimann's wife. A brief shift of scene to Venice to investigate leads from Baudler's youth doesn't add much to the plot, which unfortunately builds to a resolution that will strike many readers as a letdown after the elaborate setup.

April 1, 2008
A politically sensitive case and a ghost from the past consume Commissario Alessandro Cenni in this sequel to "The Last Enemy". A promotion is promised if Cenni promptly solves the murder and sexual mutilation of former German cultural attaché Jarvinia Baudler, who's found to be a promiscuous blackmailing bisexual once linked to a World War II Nazi counterfeiting scheme. As he pursues this investigation, which recalls some decades-old unsolved murders in the same small Umbrian town of Paradiso, Cenni is stunned to spot Chiara, the woman he loved 20 years earlier, whose kidnapping and presumed murder led him to his profession. While his obsession with Chiara turns to profound self-doubt, Cenni applies dogged police work and persuasion to the case at hand. Brophy has a fine budding series here, with winning characters and settings that include Venice and Murano as well as Umbria, and the ongoing Chiara subplot will have readers anticipating the next installment. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 1/08.]

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2008
Adult/High School-A womans bloody and disfigured body is found in her basement in Paradiso. Police Commissario Alessandro Cenni, who has grown up in Perugia, a village near this Umbrian hill town, is on the case. His investigation takes him through the narrow lanes of Paradiso and briefly through the canals of Venice. Is it a coincidence that a grisly murder of a mother and child took place in the same house 50 years earlier? And if that isnt enough, in the course of his investigation in Venice, Cenni catches a glimpse of the former love of his life, who was kidnapped 20 years earlier. Readers will be drawn into this well-crafted mystery. Brophys well-drawn characters include a German woman with a checkered past, her cat-loving neighbor, an Italian hermaphrodite, an aged contessa, and the handsome police inspector. The author feeds readers just enough information through the twists and turns of the plot to keep them on their toes. Teens will love this delightful, action-packed whodunit with some Italian travel and culture thrown in for good measure."Ellen Bell, Amador Valley High School, Pleasanton, CA"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2008
Commissario Alessandro Cenni, on the outs with his superiors, has a chance to escape the hinterlands and return to Perugia, in the heart of his beloved Umbria, but only if he can solve the murder of retired German diplomat Jarvinia Baudler. The game plan is to arrest the young African woman who was Baudlers lover, but Cenni quickly sees that the case is more complicated than that: Baudler was a multitasking blackmailer, putting the sting on a plethora of former lovers, neighbors with secrets, and even her employers at the German embassy. Cenni and his no-nonsense colleague, Elena Ottaviani, sort through the suspects and deal with sundry personal issues involving her marriage and his obsession with his college lover, who was kidnapped more than 20 years ago. Brophy not only has found in Umbria a fresh setting for Italian crime fiction but she has also created a character in Cenni, who combines the beguiling personal flaws, slumbering sex appeal, and mysterious detachment of David Hewsons Leo Falcone and Nic Costa. Readers bitten by the Italian crime bug are sure to succumb to Cennis charms.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)