
Introducing Commissario Cenni of Umbria's State Police Rita Minelli grew up in Brooklyn, the only child of a narcissistic Italian mother and the GI she married at the end of World War II. After her mother's death, Rita quits her teaching job and descends upon her poor but aristocratic...

When her domineering mother dies, Rita's aristocratic Italian relations are aghast to learn that she is planning to live with them. As teh penitentes processional winds through Assissi's streets during Holy Week, someone smothers her. Commisario Alessandro Cenni must find her...