Deadly Paradise, A Commissario Cenni Investigation

A German diplomat with many secrets is found dead in this “outstanding” police procedural series set in Italy’s Umbria region (The Denver Post).

In the peaceful Umbrian village of Paradiso, the murder and mutilation of an elderly German woman is bewildering. That is, until Insp. 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 an African female lover in residence.

To complicate things further, 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 after all: It was the site of a scandalous murder fifty years earlier.

Cenni’s boss wants a scapegoat, and the woman’s young lover is the obvious target. But Cenni cannot bring himself to close the case without ensuring that the true perpetrator is brought to justice.