Welcome to another instalment in TA Williams' Armstrong and Oscar mystery series, Murder in Bologna.
Bologna, Italy's happiest city - or is it?
A grieving father asks Dan to uncover the truth behind the
death of his gifted son, a student at Bologna's prestigious Art Institute.
Accompanied by his loyal Labrador, Oscar, Dan heads north from Florence to
investigate.
Still life or still death?
The student's former girlfriend is consumed by grief and the
Art Institute is mourning one of its brightest talents. But beneath the
surface, Dan senses that someone is hiding the truth.
(Artistic) license to kill?
Doing a favour for his friend, Commissario Virgilio Pisano
of the Florence murder squad, Dan soon finds himself caught up in the shady
world of drug dealing, organised crime and fraud on a grand scale.
A paintbrush with death
When the killer strikes again, Dan faces one of his toughest
cases yet. With Officer Oscar's nose for trouble, he must catch the murderer
before it's too late.
My Thoughts
I always enjoy seeing where the next Armstrong and Oscar mystery is set and this story in Bologna did not disappoint. You are taken into the world of the students there, as well as the Fine Arts world and of course meet up with some very dodgy characters. Originally investigating an apparent overdose, Dan finds that there are several interesting threads of investigation and quite a few people with suspicious motivation.
Oscar, as ever, does a sterling job of sniffing out hidden secrets and one of my favourite parts ( apart from Oscar) has to be seeing how the local police treat Dan as usually they are suspicious of PIs. With a beautiful setting, an interesting plot and some surprises at the end, I can confidently recommend this mystery read.
In short: Take nothing at face value
About the Author
I’m a man. And a pretty old man as well. I
studied languages at Nottingham University a long time ago and then lived and
worked in France and Switzerland before going to work in Italy for seven years.
My Italian wife and I then came back to the UK with our little daughter (now
long-since grown up) where I ran a big English language school for many years.
We now live in a sleepy little village in Devonshire. I’ve been writing almost
all my life but it was only 13 years ago that I finally managed to find a
publisher who liked my work enough to offer me my first contract.
I started off writing romances but after 28 of
them, I knew I wanted to try something different, and so the first of the
Armstrong and Oscar cozy mysteries, Murder in Tuscany, was born three years
ago. I’ve been having a lot of fun ever since getting to know the dynamic duo
(and introducing them to people all over the world). These books are cosy crime
[a genre I didn't even know existed when I started writing them). They are
murder mysteries, but not gory, over-violent stuff, but stories designed to
exercise the brain of the reader and to put a smile on their face. Maybe it’s
because there are so many horrible things happening in the world today that I
feel I need to do my best to provide something to cheer my readers up. My books
provide escapism to some gorgeous locations all over my beloved Italy.
Thanks to T A Williams, Boldwood Books, and Rachel of Rachel's Random Resources for a copy of the book and a place on the event.
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