Book 1st U.S. edition, March 1997, with complete number line beginning with

Book 1st U.S. edition, March 1997, with complete number line beginning with 1. Fine in fine dust jacket, not price clipped, in protective mylar cover. The second entry in the great Carlo Arbati series. Italy. An ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD NOMINEE for Best Novel. "Cops in crime novels should know better than to take vacations. When Florentine poet and police inspector Carlo Arbati (Adam Dalgliesh, Italian style) agrees to accept a literary award in nearby Lucca, you know he's walking into trouble. First an American is impaled by the bronze spear of a Mycenaean warrior, and then another American mysteriously drops dead at the reception following Arbati's award ceremony. Arbati agrees to assist his friend and fellow cop Giorgio Bruni in the investigation, which soon uncovers an elaborate art-fraud scheme involving members of the Luccan expatriate community. This second Arbati mystery, following The Last Castrato (1995), clearly establishes Hill's series as a contender in the growing European procedural sweepstakes. Arbati combines Dalgliesh's poetic sensibility with a continental joie de vivre that proves irresistible, and the supporting cast of idiosyncratic expatriates is an equal delight."--BOOKLIST.