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...