A TASTE FOR MURDER

Baker’s debut asks who stained the paradise of Capri by killing a woman the local police prefer to think fell accidentally to her death.

It’s not till nearly a year after his wife was killed by a hit-and-run driver back in London that DCI Joseph Mottram is sent on compassionate leave and urged to take his daughter, Angelica, to spend time with his in-laws in Italy. Since he’s never been close to either of Sofia’s parents, restaurateurs Gennaro and Elena Da Vinale, and since Angelica, at 17, is more closely bonded to her late mother than to him, Joe offers only token resistance when newly promoted Inspector Lara Sarrancino asks for his help looking into the death of British national Shannon Headley, who owned the popular dating website Girl Cupid until she slipped or was pushed off a cliff into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The meager pool of suspects is narrowed even further after most of them produce alibis, apparently ruling out Shannon’s fiancé, Manny Sanghera, and Miles Yeats, the former business associate who threatened to sue her over the sale of Girl Cupid. So Joe is left free to wonder whether the death might be connected to Neapolitan “businessman” Rocco Di Biasi and to fulminate over Angelica’s increasingly secretive meetings with dishy local Daniele Russo. The investigation is unspectacular but steadily absorbing. Lara and the grieving but highly observant Joe make a great pair, and Baker weaves the obligatory family problems more closely into the mystery than you’d expect. And then of course there’s the food, which is also folded into the plot when Gennaro offers to teach Joe to cook.

Death by selfie or murder most foul? It’s worth the trip to find out.