Delayed Death (Temptation in Florence Book 1) / Beate Boeker

Reviewed by: ?wazithinkin

Genre: Cozy Murder Mystery/ Contemporary Fiction

Approximate word count: 85-90,000 words

Availability    

Kindle  US: YES  UK: YES  Nook: YES  Smashwords: YES  Paper: YES

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Author:

Beate Boeker describes herself as a cautious cosmopolitan. She lives in northern Germany and works as a marketing manager by day. Ms. Boeker is married, has a young daughter, and a university diploma in International Business Administration.

On her website she says… “It was inevitable that I should work with books sooner or later; I even have it in my name: Boeker is the word for books in the local German dialect and my first name Beate is straight from Latin and can be translated as ‘Happy’. With a name that reads ‘Happy Books’, what else could I do but write romances?” Also check out her Facebook page.

Description:

“Delayed Death is an entertaining mystery set in Florence, Italy. When Carlina finds her grandfather dead on the day of her cousin's wedding, she decides to hide the corpse until after the ceremony. However, her grandfather was poisoned, and she becomes the attractive Inspector's prime suspect. On top of that, she has to manage her boisterous family and her luxurious lingerie store called Temptation, a juggling act that creates many hilarious situations.”  

Appraisal:

In the historic center of Florence, Italy lives a large eccentric Italian family. Most of the family is housed in an apartment type housing unit all under one roof. Try to imagine that for a while, having aunts, uncles, grandfather, mother, and cousins around you every time you turned around. That would be enough to drive me crazy!

On Emma’s wedding day Carlina and Emma discover their grandfather, Nico, passed away at the kitchen table when they stop in to pick him up to head to Emma’s wedding. Rather than ruin her wedding day Emma wants to wait until after the wedding to have his body “discovered”. So Emma enlists Carlina to help her move his body from the kitchen table back to bed and tell everyone he wasn’t feeling well enough to come to the wedding. Luckily the wedding goes off without a hitch.

The next morning when Nico is discovered Uncle Tio, Nico’s twin brother, is positive there has been foul play because Nico was wearing his socks in bed. Now it is homicide department Commissario Stefano Garini’s  job to get to the bottom of the matter and solve the mystery. Since Carlina was the last one to see her grandfather Nico “alive” she ends up being the prime suspect. Commissario Garini is a staunch no nonsense type of officer who shows no emotion while on the job. Unfortunately he ends up training a bumbling assistant during this case, who happens to be his boss’s son.

The plot moves along at a fast pace as Garini questions each family member and he has to make heads or tails out of each of their eccentricities. When Carlina confesses to lies she told from the beginning, Garini is able to buy into her story. Now the race is on to uncover the murderer before more victims start piling up. Garini is under pressure from his boss to bring in a suspect whether they are guilty or not just so it looks good on the books.

As Carlina and Commissario Garini work together to solve the murder Garini finds himself in Carlina’s luxury undergarment store Temptations far too often for his comfort. I enjoyed watching Garini’s gruff exterior crack as his feelings for Carlina developed. It was also just as much fun to watch Carlina soften her attitude towards Garini as she realized that he was doing everything he could to watch out for her best interests during the investigation. It is going to be fun to watch the relationship between these two ripen to perfection.

Murder mysteries are not my usual genre and I found myself quite tense as the plot twisted into a second murder. So, I did buy into the characters and the plot. If you are looking for a unique murder mystery perhaps this is what you are looking for.

Format/Typo Issues:

I found no significant errors.

Rating: **** Four stars