Introducing Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabinieri, a Sicilian stationed far from home. He wants to go south for Christmas to spend the holiday with his family, but he is laid up with the 'flu. At this awkward moment, the death of a retired Englishman is reported. A most inconvenient time for a murder case. Who has shot Mr Langley-Smythe in the back? And why has Scotland Yard felt it appropriate to send two detectives, one of whom speaks no Italian, to 'help' the marshal and his colleagues with their investigation? Most importantly for the marshal, ever the Italian, will he be able to solve the crime in time to join his family over the holiday season?This first book in the ever popular detective series is a wonderfully evocative piece of crime fiction and quasi-travel writing, as the reader is immediately transported into the heart of Florence, one of Italy's most beautiful cities.



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Classic Italian crime fiction by the Donna Leon of Florence, the acclaimed Magdalen Nabb.

There was enough trouble around to keep the police busy for months. All over Florence tourists were being robbed, cars stolen, and somewhere in the city terrorists were quietly at work. So the suicide of a Dutch jeweller looked like an open and shut case. Certainly there were some slight discrepancies. But the only witnesses were a blind man, and an old woman given to vicious lying. Yet the Marshal felt uneasy - it was all so conveniently simple...



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Everyone is so distracted by the phenomenon of a March snowfall in Florence that no one notices two foreign girls being abducted from the piazza at gunpoint in broad daylight. Even Marshal Guarnaccia has trouble piecing together what he has actually seen: tourists in a car holding up a big map, children going to school, a bus, a drug addict on the steps of Santo Spirito church, a single Sardinian bagpiper in a long, black shepherd’s cloak.

One of the girls, a Norwegian university student, turns up in Pontino, a village in the Chianti hills, where she is hospitalized for a concussion, a leg wound, and possible pneumonia. She says she has been released by the kidnappers so she can make contact. The other kidnap victim, an American girl, is being held for ransom. But the marshal thinks she’s lying.

Kidnapping has become a local racket. It is up to Marshal Guarnaccia to save the young American and put a stop to a flourishing criminal enterprise.



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The body of a woman, clad in nothing but a fur coat and jewelry, is found floating in the Arno at dawn. Marshal Guarnaccia of the Florentine carabinieri identifies her as a foreigner who lived for years as a recluse in one of Florence’s most respectable hotels. But how and why did she die? Following a complex trail of blackmail, jewel theft, and drug-dealing, Marshal Guarnaccia finally tracks down the shocking truths about a cold-blooded murderer and his all-too-trusting victim.



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A young Swiss art student has been reported missing, and Marshal Guarnaccia must travel to the small town where she was studying to find out the truth about her disappearance. When her body is found, it appears that she was the victim of a sex-related crime. But Guarnaccia—who comes from a small town himself—suspects that a local feud with roots in the horrors and betrayals of World War II may play an important part in the solution to the crime.



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Out giving his wife driving lessons, Marshal Guarnaccia of the Carabinieri witnesses a disturbance in the streets involving a local eccentric, “crazy Clementina.” When the woman is found dead in her apartment soon after the incident of an apparent suicide, the marshal is puzzled and immediately suspects foul play. But who would have a motive to kill her? As the marshal dives into the case and reconstructs Clementina’s tragic past, his investigation dredges up the events surrounding a disastrous flood some twenty years earlier and a controversial piece of legislation with profound effects on the lives of Italy’s mentally unstable residents.



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The marshal must leave his snug world at the Pitti Palace to seek a criminal in the shadowy haunts of prostitutes, pimps, and tricks. No one believes that he can navigate in this milieu, much less identify a killer, but once again he confounds their expectations.



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When the body of Buongianni Corsi is found lying face down in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ulderighi. There seems no doubt in the minds of his family that his death was an accident. The Marchesa, wife of the dead man, will entertain no other possibility and her power and status in the city means that Marshal Guarnaccia questions at his peril. But question he does. The death could have been suicide, or even murder. Guarnaccia knows something is not quite right, and resents being expected to go along with any possible cover up. The Palazzo is a maze of passageways, darkened corridors, locked rooms and something else, a family secret. Can he ignore his instincts and his integrity? Should he press on with the case, risk his job, and maybe more? As he paces the courtyard of the Palazzo, he is haunted by the strange piano and flute music that filters down from above, as well as by the irresistible conviction that something truly sinister has happened there...



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A well-known writer is found dead in the Villa Torrini near Florence without a mark of violence on her. Marshal Guarnaccia of the carabinieri must solve the mystery while struggling with a new legal system and a strict diet.



Based on a chilling true crime, The Monster of Florence follows the reopening of a cold case—a serial killer who targeted unmarried couples and terrorized Florence for two decades.Marshal Guarnaccia's job with the carabinieri—the local Florentine police—usually involves restoring stolen handbags to grateful old ladies and lost cameras to bewildered tourists. So when he is assigned to work with the police in trying to track down a vicious serial killer, he feels out of his league. To make matters worse, the Proc he must report to is Simonetti, the same man he knows drove an innocent man to suicide several years earlier in his blind quest for a conviction. The Marshal can't let the stress of the case get to him if he wants to make sure justice is upheld.