Audiobooks by David P. Wagner

Best Served Cold

"Revenge is a dish best served cold When an old college friend leading a religious tour in Assisi asks interpreter Rick Montoya to fill in for their guide who's gone missing, Rick is happy to oblige. He's looking forward to seeing his old friend, and the food and wine of Umbria sound like the perfect reward for a tense translation job he's just completed for the police in Palermo involving witness testimony against the mafia. But when the shady tour guide is found dead the next morning under suspicious circumstances, Rick's relaxing gig turns into an unofficial job assisting the local police inspector with her interviews of the tour group members. Could one of the pious pilgrims be a cold-blooded killer? Or has one of the victim's many shady dealings finally caught up with him? For fans of Martin Walker and Donna Leon, Best Served Cold takes listeners on a delicious excursion through the Umbrian hills as Rick leads his tour—and the police investigation—to a killer conclusion."

David P. Wagner (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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To Die in Tuscany

"'An armchair travelers delight' —Publishers Weekly One dead art collector and a gallery of suspects. This romantic weekend just turned deadly . . . Translator Rick Montoya is looking forward to a quiet weekend away with his girlfriend, Betta, an art fraud investigator for the Italian Culture Ministry. Their destination: the beautiful village of Urbino, home to Renaissance masters Rafael and the lesser-known Piero della Francesca. While Betta does have official business to attend to—namely, collecting a priceless Piero drawing from a wealthy Spanish collector on the ministry's behalf—she asks Rick to join her 'in case she needs an interpreter,' but with other, less-official intentions in mind. When the Spaniard is found murdered and the drawing stolen, Betta must shift back into art cop mode, and Rick's official services are required after all. As they set out to discover the identity of the killer and the whereabouts of the stolen sketch, they are drawn from Urbino's cobbled streets to eastern Tuscany and back as the list of suspects grows longer—and more dangerous. Will this lovers' getaway literally be to die for?"

David P. Wagner (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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Roman Count Down

"Rick Montoya, eager to experience more of his Italian mother's culture, heads to Rome to start his own translation business. He's armed with curiosity and an appetite for local food and wine. Rick's maternal uncle is a Roman cop with one eye to his nephew's welfare and another to how Rick might be useful, perhaps widen his career choices. So Commissario Piero Fontana pulls Rick into an investigation: the murder of Count Umberto Zimbardi. The wealthy count enjoyed indulging a circle of convivial friends and a hobby collecting oral histories by interviewing residents in the city's centro storico. After heading home from such an afternoon, he was found dead on a bridge over the Tiber. As a newcomer and an investigator, Rick makes rookie mistakes. He's learning the ropes as an amateur sleuth and that living in Rome is different from visiting. Plus he's distracted by a woman pressing him into service as an Italy tour guide and the arrival of a college friend on a mission to sell Argentine wine to the Vatican. But there's a dangerous countdown at play, and Rick needs to solve the case before the unthinkable happens."

David P. Wagner (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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Return to Umbria: A Rick Montoya Italian Mystery

"Orvieto―its very name brings to mind priceless art, colorful ceramics, and straw-colored wine. And the most famous cathedral façade in Italy, a structure of gothic spires, arches, statues, and mosaics. But as Rick Montoya discovers, this jewel of Umbria can have an ugly side as well. When Rick Montoya moved to his mother’s Italy from his father’s Santa Fe, New Mexico, to work as a freelance translator using his dual heritage, he didn’t expect to be helping the Italian police. His maternal uncle, a high-level commissioner in Rome, however, sees no reason not to use the resources at hand. Rick’s fourth investigation should not have involved crime. It begins when Rick is asked by his uncle to go to Orvieto to talk some sense into his cousin Fabrizio, whose fling with an older married woman is embarrassing the family. Rick agrees to give it a try, and plans a short but romantic weekend in Orvieto with Betta Innocenti, the woman he met in Bassano. What could go wrong? Less than a day after their arrival, his language skills draw him into the brutal murder of an American visitor. He finds that he knows the policeman in charge, but Inspector LoGuercio has changed since the time they met in Volterra. The murdered woman had studied art in Italy decades earlier―why has she returned now? And why was she dumped at night on a dusty road? Through her traveling companions, her devastated daughter and best friend, as well as a growing list of those who knew her from her student days, they realize she had come to Orvieto to face the past. And then a second murder occurs in a public park, with Montoya so close that he wonders if he could have been the intended target. Is all this connected to Fabrizio and his affair, or to the American’s death? More violence erupts, some of it definitely directed at Rick himself. Strong suspects, tantalizing secrets, concealed motives, and risky behaviors tie to a fascinating landscape and layers of Orvieto’s past."

David P. Wagner (Author), David Colacci (Narrator)

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