Farewell to the Flesh

By Edward Sklepowich

During Carnival, Urbino Macintyre discovers a murder in a convent

The Charity of Santa Crispina convent is a severe place, its rooms spartan, its food bland. But the time has come for Carnival in Venice, and a tourist will take any room he can find. Photographer Val Gibbon has come to document the renovation of a nearby church, but he has hardly begun his work before a knife finds its way into his chest, and the convent becomes a crime scene.

American expatriate Urbino Macintyre, a biographer and amateur sleuth, sets aside his plans for Carnival to look into the murder. In this ancient city, nothing is ever as it seems -- especially not in the season when the only creature not wearing a mask is death itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781784089832

Edward Sklepowich

Edward Sklepowich is an American author of mysteries. Raised in Connecticut, he grew up living with his parents and his grandparents, who immersed him in Italian culture and Neapolitan dialect from a young age. A Fulbright scholarship took him to Europe and Africa, and he has made his home across the Mediterranean, living in Venice, Naples, Egypt, and Tunisia. Deeply connected to his Italian heritage, Sklepowich has used the country as the setting for all of his fiction. Sklepowich’s debut novel, Death in a Serene City (1990), introduced Urbino Macintyre, an American expatriate and amateur sleuth who undertakes to solve a Venetian murder. Sklepowich treats Venice as a character, using its ancient atmosphere to shape his classically structured mysteries. He has written eight more Mysteries of Venice—most recently, The Veils of Venice (2009).