A Time of Mourning

A Time of Mourning introduces Sandro Cellini, ex-cop and private detective: Florence's answer to Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti





When a young English girl goes missing from among Florence's hard-drinking, high-living community of foreign art students, ex-policeman, good husband and newly-minted private detective Sandro Cellini is at first unwilling to see any connection with his investigation of the suicide of an elderly Jewish architect. But as he investigates the circumstances of Claudio Gentileschi's death more closely, the connections between the cases multiply, and Sandro's first case turns out to be darker and more complex than he could have imagined...



Christobel Kent was born in London and educated at Cambridge. She has lived variously in Essex, London and Italy. Her childhood included several years spent on a Thames sailing barge in Maldon, Essex with her father, stepmother, three siblings and four step-siblings, which provided inspiration for the setting of her recent novel The Crooked House. She now lives in both Cambridge and Florence with her husband and five children.



Thoughtful, lugubrious, adorable Florentine Sandro Cellini has become my comfort-detective of choice... He make me almost long for a cold so I can go to bed and read.