book - Softcover

Frank is 50, overweight, unfit and fed up with his job. So far so usual, but for Frank the opportunity comes with a move to Italy as villa-sitter for Italian friends. Here, he hopes, he will find the time and inspiration to write a crime novel. Frank's wife, Flora, is a successful PA who spends part of her time in the UK and part with Frank in Italy, where they are visited by a variety of eccentric friends and relatives. Meanwhile an increasingly frustrated Frank finds it very difficult to get much written, though he is building up an impressive dossier of homicidal expertise. A local crime wave and his own misadventures bring Frank into contact with the local law and he decides to turn detective. In the middle of all this, Frank's wife Flora disappears and Frank finds himself a murder suspect. The countryside, people, culture food, flora and fauna of eastern Tuscany and northern Umbria are the inspiration for this take on the Brits-go-and-live-in-sunny-place-and-have-their-lives-transformed genre.