This Crumbling Pageant

An exuberant, wickedly funny mystery that delights from beginning to end. —Publishers Weekly, Booklife Prize judgeA vacation to Italy goes awry for an American couple in this tart and charming literary debut.Minor league pitcher Scott Whittier has been put out to pasture after one disgraceful inning in the big leagues. Now he'd like to disappear for a while. So he and his wife, Holly — a former Art History student — travel to Bologna. There at a flea market they come across a painting which Holly suspects is by 19th-century artist John Frederick Kensett, and worth millions. Scott's quest to obtain the painting takes him to a murder mystery and a marital crisis in this humorous examination of greed, jealousy, Art, and the "bel paese."A finalist for Publishers Weekly Booklife Prize:"Fiore's novel is a wild, exuberant ride through a picturesque Italy, its plot offering as many twists and turns as a Bolognese street. Incorporating an art heist, a...