Soho Press

In the peaceful Umbrian village of Paradiso, the murder and mutilation of an elderly German woman is bewildering. That is, until Inspector Alessandro Cenni of the State Police discovers that this retired cultural attaché was not only a difficult tenant and a blackmailer, but a bisexual swinger who recently had a female lover in residence. The dead woman grew up in occupied Venice, and one of her secrets from World War II might have surfaced. And the bucolic village is not that innocent: it was the site of a scandalous murder fifty years earlier.

Cenni’s boss wants a scapegoat, and the woman’s young former lover is the obvious target, but Cenni cannot bring himself to close the case without bringing the true perpetrator to justice.