This delightful new entry in the Ellie Stone series is a lively, lovely mix of Agatha Christie, Donna Leon, and the Decameron. Its charm can be found equally in the story’s narrator Ellie Stone, in the beautifully evoked Italian landscape, and in the complexities of the mystery itself. For anyone not familiar with this excellent series, it’s high time you got to know James Ziskin’s work. Turn to Stone is a great place to begin.
Description
This 1960s-era locked-room mystery takes Ellie Stone to Florence, Italy--a seemingly idyllic setting, which in this case has sinister undertones.
Florence, Italy, August 1963. In Italy to accept a posthumous award for her late father's academic work, "girl reporter" Ellie Stone is invited to spend a weekend outside Florence with some of the scholars attending the symposium. A suspected rubella outbreak leaves the ten friends quarantined in the bucolic setting with little to do but tell stories to entertain themselves. Deciding to make the best of their confinement, the men and women spin tales, gorge themselves on fine Tuscan food and wine, and enjoy the delicious fruit of transient love. But the summer bacchanalia takes a menacing turn when the man who organized the symposium is fished out of the Arno. "Morto." As long-buried secrets rise to the surface, Ellie must figure out if one or more of her newfound friends is capable of murder.
Reviews
Our favorite 'girl reporter' takes us to the beautiful country, only to meet up with la morte. A new Ellie Stone adventure is truly a reason to raise a glass.
A mystery that puts an inventive twist on Boccaccio’s Decameron, Turn to Stone takes the reader on a richly imagined and entertaining journey to Florence and the Tuscan countryside in 1963. And the engaging, indomitable Ellie Stone, who holds her liquor but never her tongue, is the perfect traveling companion.
What’s better than a new Ellie Stone mystery? Ellie Stone in Florence, where wine and whisky flow as freely as does the razor-sharp wit of this amateur sleuth, a sophisticated modern young woman of the early 1960s. Ellie probes the mystery behind the death of an Italian professor, laying bare the secrets of an eclectic circle of academics. Sharp, entertaining, and vividly enjoyable.
