The Body in the Piazza: A Faith Fairchild Mystery

by Katherine Hall Page Narrated by Tanya Eby

Overview

To celebrate a significant wedding anniversary, amateur sleuth/caterer Faith Fairchild and her husband, the Reverend Tom Fairchild, are off to Italy for a vacation filled with exquisite indulgences. The plan is to spend a romantic weekend in Rome, before heading to Florence to visit Faith's former assistant Francesca at her new cooking school. But a dark shadow clouds joy when someone is murdered in the Eternal City almost right before the Fairchilds' eyes! Familiar faces from Rome appear in Tuscany. Coincidence? And someone seems intent on sabotaging Francesca's new business. Faith struggles to follow a trail more twisting than fusili and ends up putting both herself and her husband in peril.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Page’s delightful 21st Faith Fairchild mystery (after 2012’s The Body in the Boudoir) takes the Aleford, Mass., caterer and her husband, the Rev. Thomas Fairchild, to Italy to celebrate a special anniversary—and to attend the cooking school of Francesca Rossi, a Tuscan friend whom they last saw on their honeymoon in Northern Italy years before. While in Rome, the couple meets the charming Freddy Ives, a British travel writer. Soon after, while enjoying a romantic stroll in the Piazza Farnese, they have the misfortune to witness Freddy suffer a mortal knife wound in a scuffle with a man who flees. The wonderful food at Francesca’s cooking school in Tuscany can’t distract Faith and Tom from trying to solve Freddy’s murder. Hungry readers will rush to the kitchen if not to their travel agent to book tickets to Italy. Agent: Faith Hamlin, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. (May)

Connecticut Post

Page's ability to keep her characters and plots fresh for more htan two decades is quite remarkable...Page has yet to disappointe readers...[The Body in the Piazza] is one of the most entertaining and most sophisticated entries in the series...[it] is just about perfect escapism.

Booklist

A highly entertaining mystery series [that] effectively mixes modern-day moral dilemmas with charm, warmth, and humor.

Denver Post

[An] endearing series.

South Florida Sun Sentinel

[Page] is an expert at the puzzle mystery.

Diane Mott Davidson

Katherine Hall Page's intellect and wit shine through in every line...Hungry readers, enjoy!

Harlan Coben

Katherine Hall Page is my favorite writer of the traditional mystery.

Kirkus Reviews

The Fairchilds celebrate their 25th anniversary in a Tuscany cooking school complete with wine, olives, secretive companions and homicide. Caterer Faith Fairchild and her pastor husband, Tom, have a few days in Rome before heading for the outskirts of Florence for the inaugural week of her former assistant Francesca's Cucina Rossi cooking program. They're befriended by Freddy Ives, who reveals few personal details but knows the best restaurants, cafes and tourist vistas in town. To the Fairchilds' horror, he's stabbed to death in a Roman piazza, grasping for his pen and saying, "They're going to ki...." The police seem uninterested, and the Fairchilds, who barely caught a glimpse of the attacker, head for the Tuscany hills, where Francesca's cooking students are gathered. There are a bickering couple, possibly contemplating divorce; a goth girl with facial piercings; a British couple who find fault with everything; a pair of lovebirds; some Southern ladies; and Francesca's neighbor Luke, who owns a grand palazzo and the surrounding vineyards. The group has barely warmed up the oven when Francesca's assistant quits, decapitated snakes are left in all the bathtubs, Faith is locked in an Etruscan tomb, Tom is kidnapped, Freddy's notebook is discovered in the palazzo, and his pen turns up too, startling one and all. It will take a call to Faith's sister back in the States to get the British Embassy involved and separate an assassination plot from the shenanigans of a jealous local, but not to worry: The cooking school is a major success, and the participants leave with a nice set of recipes. Tuscany food markets, extra virgin olive oil and historic sites are all rendered with Page's typical gusto and charm (The Body in the Boudoir, 2012, etc.), but, again typically, the plot collapses since logic and reason remain missing ingredients.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175701419
Publisher:	Dreamscape Media
Publication date:	05/14/2013
Series:	Faith Fairchild Series , #21
Edition description:	Unabridged

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