One may usually associate a castle in Tuscany with love and romance - I will rather suspect some dark secrets in a German castle - but in Murder Under the Tuscan Sun by Rachel Rhys - the pen name of Tamar Cohen - expect the unexpected.
A local intrigue and a family feud, displaying an extremely diverse and sometimes awkward cast of characters with an English widow who was looking for forgetting the tragic death of both her husband and her daughter, the story exposes a game of lies and smoking mirrors. Expect Gothic suspense and mysterious threats through the walls, everything set against the background of a picturesque scenery.
The book has the pace and the touch of a classical mystery, although the book looks mostly as out of time. I was partly disappointed by the slow pace, but the construction of the mystery and the thread leading to the solution compensated largely this shortcoming according to my fast forward taste.
Historical mysteries are rare those days, but Murder Under the Tuscan Sun succeeds to balance the two sides of the story without forcing the reader to delve too much into the historical part and forcing too much the mystery. The two directions of the story are coming up naturally, completing each other.
Definitely, I am curious about reading more books by Rhys, besides being more than keen to visit Tuscany, any time soon. I will definitely be paying some high attention in case I am tempted to spend some time in a castle, as it may lead to the exact opposite of a fairy tale.
Rating: 4 stars
Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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