Ghirlandaio's Daughter: A Detective Carlo Arbati Mystery

In his second case, Florentine police detective and poet Carlo Arbati (The Last Castrato) takes a busman's holiday when he wins a gold medal for his new book and visits lifelong friend Inspector Giancarlo Bonelli in Lucca. Upon his arrival, Bonelli tells Arbati about an odd recent death in which an American was stabbed to death when a spear-carrying statue toppled over on him. At the inquest, which rules the death accidental, both policemen notice a subtle byplay of glances and looks among those spectators involved with the man. When American corporate lawyer Peter Morgan, who claimed to be the dead man's cousin, is murdered after the poetry awards ceremony, they aren't surprised to see these same people surface as suspects. Slowly, Arbati and Bonelli piece together a blackmail scheme, hatched by the two Americans, involving a British art house headed by an unscrupulous crook, its resident artist and the forgery of an Italian masterpiece, Ghirlandaio's Daughter. Complicating their speedy solution of the murder, however, are a number of people who would have liked to have seen Morgan dead: Morgan's German mistress, her jealous older husband, his lecherous son and an English woman who is protectively enamored of the painter. As the inspectors question suspects and fabricate theories, only to have them crumble under examination, Hill spins a intriguingly intimate story of international intrigue and human frailty. (Mar.)