On a late October Sunday morning in Gravigna, Tuscany, Maresciallo Perillo is having breakfast with former NYPD homicide detective Nico Doyle when he is called back to the station in Greve. Hotel Bella Vista’s young manager, Laura
Benati, is worried. Her eighty-year-old bartender, Cesare Costanzi, has been missing for three days.
The next morning, Jimmy, co-owner of Gravigna’s local café, runs out of gas on his way back from Florence. When Nico meets him to help, Nico’s dog, OneWag, reacts to the smell coming from Jimmy’s trunk. Inside Nico finds a body wrapped in plastic: Cesare Costanzi, stabbed several times in the chest.
It is unclear why anyone would want Cesare dead, but that doesn’t stop the Gravigna grapevine from spreading rumors at lightning speed. With numerous suspects on his list, Perillo has no other choice but to turn to Nico once again for help with the investigation.
One year after moving to his late wife’s Tuscan hometown of Gravigna, ex-NYPD detective Nico Doyle has fully settled into Italian country life, helping to serve and test recipes at his in-laws’ restaurant.
But the town is shaken by the arrival of wine critic Michele Mantelli in his flashy Jaguar. Mantelli holds his influential culinary magazine and blog over Gravigna’s vintners and restaurateurs. Some of Gravigna's residents are impressed by his
reputation, while others are enraged—especially Nico's landlord, whose vineyards Mantelli seems intent on ruining.
Needless to say, Mantelli’s lavish, larger-than-life, and often vindictive personality has made him many enemies, and when he is poisoned, the local maresciallo, Perillo, has a headache of a high-profile murder on his hands—and once again
turns to Nico for help.
