Nonna Maria and the Case of the Stolen Necklace: A Novel

Nonna Maria has a lot on her plate-and it´s not just fresh pasta. Two crimes have rocked the sun-drenched island of Ischia, and once again the island´s denizens have called upon the espresso-brewing, sage-counsel-giving sleuth. A wealthy woman alleges that a valuable necklace has been stolen from her hotel room. She blames one of the young women working on the cleaning crew as the most likely suspect-a young woman who turns out to be Nonna Maria´s goddaughter. Loretta takes the heat, but privately she proclaims her innocence. Nearby, the body of a woman is found on a curved road near the borough of Barano. The woman is not known to anyone on the island. She has no purse, carries no identification. The one suspect is a young friend of Nonna Maria´s who drove by the area that very night and thinks that he might have hit something-a pothole, or an animal, or maybe the woman in question. It turns out that this woman had a decades-old history on Ischia, but why did she return, and more important, who killed her? It´s up to Nonna Maria to string together the clues-like the links of the beautiful missing necklace-and solve these two mysteries before death comes to Ischia again.