Cold Tuscan Stone

A Rick Montoya Italian Mystery, Book 1

By: David Wagner

Narrated by: David Colacci

Rick Montoya has just moved from Santa Fe to Rome, embracing the life of a translator. He's beginning to settle in to la dolce vita when school friend Beppo, now senior in the Italian Art Squad, recruits Rick for an unofficial undercover role. Armed with a list of galleries, suspects, and an expense account, Rick arrives in Tuscany posing as a buyer for a Santa Fe gallery to flush out traffickers in priceless burial urns.

However, before sunset on his first day in Volterra, the challenge intensifies. Rick has one quick conversation with a gallery employee who dies minutes later in a brutal fall from a high cliff. Has the trade in fraudulent artifacts upgraded to murder? Are the traffickers already on to Rick?

The local commissario and his team consider Rick an amateur and, worse, a foreigner. Plus Rick is a suspect in what proves to be the dead man's murder. While the Volterra squad pursues its leads, Rick continues to interview his list: a museum director, a top gallery owner, a low-profile import-export businessman and his enterprising color-coordinated assistant, a sensuous heiress with a private art specialty and clientele. When Rick's girlfriend Erica, an art history professor, arrives from Rome to visit him, she rekindles a friendship with an alluring, maybe dangerous, acquaintance. Has Rick's role made him the target of both cops and criminals?

©2013 David Wagner (P)2013 AudioGO

First in a Series, but 2, 3, 5 & 9 Unavailable

Great listen but the next available book on Audible is book 4(!) not 5, but then 6, 7 & 8 are available, but not the last one, book 9. So sad. I am a series junkie and I know how much things can change with the main characters as each book progresses, so I will not be going on to book 4 with Audible at the moment. From now on I'll look ahead to make sure the entire series is available with Audible. The story is very interesting, and the mystery plausible and intriguing with a great ending. The main character is likable. The narration is very good, with excellent Italian pronunciation. My independent bookshop has the series in stock, so I'll buy books 2, 3, & 5 & 9, and read them. Maybe I'll eventually listen to books 4, then 6-8 with Audible. Please Audible: have the entire series or not at all