The unraveling of Julia

Julia is unmoored after her husband is killed in a mugging. So, when an Italian attorney contacts her regarding the mysterious inheritance of a villa near Florence, it feels like the universe is extending a hand. In Tuscany, Julia finds that her villa is time-worn, but the caretakers welcome her warmly, and she's hopeful that local investigators can discover possible connections between her benefactress and her private adoption as a child. Her Tuscan idyll darkens quickly, though: Julia has horrific ghostly nightmares, is followed by a pair of menacing toughs, and is terrified to find a child's prison cell hidden beneath the villa. When the local carabinieri's response feels like gaslighting, Julia relies on a new friend, handsome librarian Gianluca Moretti, to investigate the mysteries swirling around the villa and her past. Supernatural and gothic elements are light but suspenseful here, enveloped in the warmth of Tuscan food and new beginnings. Scottoline's latest (following The Truth about the Devlins, 2024) is evocative of the vintage gothic tales of Phyllis A. Whitney and Victoria Holt.

Scottoline's latest links her great love of Italy with her long record of female-centered crime fiction. Julia Pritzker has a presentiment that something terrible is around the corner, but she never imagines just how terrible: When her husband, Philadelphia attorney Mike Shallette, tries to protect her from a man who grabs her designer bag, he gets stabbed to death before her eyes. Julia's grief becomes laced with guilt when she realizes that her daily horoscope had predicted a calamity she's now convinced she could have prevented. The news from Italian attorney Massimiliano Lombardi that his late client has left her millions in cash and an estate worth nearly as much again doesn't comfort her, but it does provide distraction--especially since she's never heard of Emilia Rossi and has no idea why she's been chosen as her heir. Since Julia, adopted at an early age by a couple who've been dead for years, wonders if Emilia might have been her biological grandmother, she travels to Chianti in hope of recovering some of Emilia's DNA. Unfortunately, caretakers Anna Mattia Vesta and Piero Fano have burned all of Emilia's clothing and personal items on her orders, so there's nothing left to test. Growing convinced that the stars are directing her and that her history is rooted in Emilia's decrepit house, Julia turns down repeated offers for the property and resolves to secure evidence confirming the relationship between Emilia and her. Now all she has to do is protect herself from the shadowy figures tracking and following her and recover from a series of vivid, hallucinatory nightmares that seem to be the cost of claiming her heritage. The mystery plot and the Italian idyl both play supporting roles in this fairy tale for grownups. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.