Showing results by author "Magdalen Nabb" in All Categories

The debut of Marshal Salvatore Guarnaccia of the Carabinieri, a Sicilian, stationed in Florence. It is just before Christmas and the marshal wants to go South to spend the holiday with his wife and family, but first he must recover from the flu (which has left the Florentine caribinieri short-handed) and also solve a murder.

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 to try to track down a vicious serial killer, he feels out of his league. To make matters worse, the prosecutor 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.

Daniela is a quiet single mother studying for a doctorate in chemistry. She rarely goes out, so her murder in her bedroom at the family's new villa seems inexplicable. It is true that her mother, who appears to be an alcoholic; her younger sister, who has had mental problems; and her father, who has made his money running nightclubs and is probably involved in the international sex trade, are not your average home-loving Italian nuclear family, but what can she have done to be singled out for slaughter?

Fresh new look for this bestselling book & tape featuring the Smarties prizewinner of 1995. It's Christmas, but Irina's family don't have enough money to buy her the present she wants. Then Irina sees the wooden horse in the junk shop window and all she wants is to take it home with her. Irina is sad and lonely and knows that the little horse is lonely too. But what Irina doesn't know is that this dusty little horse with the tattered mane is really an enchanted horse who comes to life and takes Irina on magical journeys.

When it comes to motives for crime, the past can never be forgotten. Sara Hirsch is a nervous elderly spinster who still lives in the flat above a long-standing Florentine antiquities shop in which she was raised. Frightened, she calls Marshal Guarnaccia for help, sure that strangers have been in her apartment. The marshal knows she is a lonely old woman but he is preoccupied with an investigation into an Albanian prostitution ring. Before he can respond to her latest alarm, she is found dead.

Olivia, an American-born model, married Count Ugo Brunamonti, a feckless, soon impoverished aristocrat. After his death, she supported her children by starting a fashion house which has prospered. When she is kidnapped, the crime is reported to Marshal Guarnaccia by her daughter, who may have been the intended victim. Kidnapping is almost a second business for the Sardinians nominally engaged in raising sheep in the Tuscan hills.

When Marshal Guarnaccia is called upon to investigate the murder of a young woman he is convinced that there’s more to the family than meets the eye, and wonders if the girl’s father, Paoletti, might have had something to do with her death.Enlisting the help of a local journalist, Marshal Guarnaccia’s investigations draw him into the seedy underworld of Florence – lap dancing, prostitution and the illegal human trafficking of Eastern European women who are sold into the sex trade.

Guarnaccia wird zu einem Mordfall außerhalb von Florenz gerufen. In einem protzig renoviertenLandgut lebt Signor Paoletti mit seiner Familie. Die älteste Tochter Silvana wurde brutal ermordet. Für Paoletti ist klar, dass es Raubmord war, doch Guarnaccia bemerkt, dass die Details nicht stimmen.

Der Maresciallo Guarnaccia ist ein ruhiger bedächtiger Mann aus dem Volk und es gefällt ihm ganz und gar nicht, dass er in einem Mord- oder Unfall im Kreise der Reichen und Intellektuellen ermitteln muss. Zu allem Überfluss wurde ihm dabei auch noch Staatsanwalt Fusarri zugeteilt, dessen bekannten Zynismus und Überheblichkeit er fürchtet.

Alle haßten die lebende Lulu, und die tote Lulu war erst recht keine sympatische Erscheinung. Niemand wollte mit diesem unmöglichen Fall zu tun zu haben, schon gar nicht Wachtmeister Gurnaccia von der Carabinieri-Station am Palazzo Pitti. Es hatte andere Fälle dieser Art gegeben, und alle waren ungelöst geblieben.