An American visits her relatives in Umbria, Italy—and soon turns up dead—in this series that " will please lovers of old-style deductive detective fiction" ( Publishers Weekly ). Rita Minelli grew up in Brooklyn, the only child of a narcissistic Italian woman who married a GI at the end of World War II. After her mother's death, Rita decides to quit her job and show up at the home of her aristocratic but cash-strapped relatives, the Count and Countess Casati, in Assisi. It is a while before they realize—to their chagrin—that Rita has come to stay. But when the family assembles to watch the penitents' procession in the town square during Easter Week, Rita does not join them as planned. Her corpse is later found in the family mausoleum. Now Alessandro Cenni, a commissario in the state police of Umbria, must unearth the secrets of the Casati family and their circle if he is to discover who killed this unwanted houseguest, and why . . .