Return to Umbria

Rick Montoya has moved to his mother's Italy from his father's New Mexico to work as a translator using his dual heritage. Now his uncle, a high-level commissioner in Rome, asks Rick to go to the beautiful city of Orvieto to talk sense into his cousin Fabrizio, whose fling with a married woman is embarrassing the family, and Rick agrees to give it a try.

On arrival, his language skills draw him into the investigation of the murder of an American visitor. The woman had studied art in Italy decades earlier, but why has she returned now? And why was she dumped at night on a dusty road? Then a second murder occurs in a public park, with Montoya so close that he wonders if he could have been the intended target. Is it all connected to Fabrizio's love affair or to the American's death? Rick finds strong suspects, tantalizing secrets, concealed motives, and risky behaviors-and more violence, some of it directed at Rick himself.