SHADOWS IN UMBRIA

A rather dusty but always agreeable archaeological romance set in the hills of Italy, where lovely young American Christina Matthews has come to help her teacher, Teresa Livorno, dig for Etruscan remains. Christina can barely handle the usual archaeological-gothic problems: thieves, gorgeous blue-eyed bandits, menacing villagers, attempted murders, and a freshly dug-up--and fresh--corpse. So when a sweet-seeming but secretly demonic local Count (who exercises droll de seigneur over the peasantry) develops the hots for Christina--with lethal intent--this dimwitted heroine has trouble coping, especially since she is preoccupied with thoughts of the gorgeous Tuscan bandit. Another innocuous but busily efficient suspense-among-the-ruins from the author of The Pompeii Scroll (1975).