Living la Dolce Vita

I started fantasizing about Lord Philip’s death three days ago. Just a painless, but fatal, heart attack that would strike my boss down in the middle of the night. When that failed to materialize, I imagined him taking a wrong step in front of a speeding bus. Today, I moved on to poison.

I’m the “new girl” at Masterpiece Tours, which offers exclusive painting holidays to well-heeled Americans on vacation in Rome. The April weather is lovely, my apartment is comfortable, and I’m living in the most beautiful city in the world. But I’ve had as much of Lord Philip Walpole as I can take.

It’s my sixth day on the job and the man has reduced me to tears five times. And I’m not a woman who cries easily. I’ve been in Italy for five months, spent three of them trying to fit in as a woman of leisure living la dolce vita, then two fruitlessly looking for a job. When Lord Philip took me on, I thought my problems had been solved. Now I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to sneak arsenic into his whiskey.

The problem is, I don’t have any idea how much would it take, or even where to get the deadly liquid. I seem to remember arsenic comes from juniper berries, but perhaps that’s cyanide.

Don’t worry, I won’t do it, pleasant as it is to imagine. I managed to survive fifty-five years without killing anyone—including that awful Lana Harrison, who thinks she knows more about managing an advertising campaign than I do—and I will survive without killing Lord Philip, too.

My husband Burt says I should just quit. But I’m not a quitter. Wasn’t I the youngest woman ever promoted to vice president at Bells & Wallace? Didn’t I single-handedly saved the PTA bake sale when 450 cupcakes, cookies, and Rice Krispies treats were savaged by Mrs. Simpson’s basset hound, Napoleon? And haven’t I sent two high-spirited children off to excellent liberal arts colleges?

Quitting now would prove everyone was right when they said working for Lord Philip was a mistake, and I’m not about to admit that. I’ll come up with another plan. I always do.

Murder in the Piazza is the first book in the NEW “Maggie White” cozy mystery series, released September 22, 2020.

Maggie White, a downsized American executive stuck in Rome on her husband’s expat assignment, is finding the dolce vita isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. She’s taken a job offering painting instruction to well-heeled travelers and her boss-a rather unpleasant English lord-has turned up dead in his penthouse. Maggie’s left with a palazzo full of suspicious guests, a valuable painting her boss might have stolen, and a policeman who’s decided she’s the prime suspect. Now Maggie must keep the tour up and running while she tracks the killer and works to clear her name.

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Meet the author
Jen Collins Moore is the author of the Maggie White Mysteries. Her short fiction has appeared in Mystery Weekly, and she is the editor of the Mystery Writers of America Midwest newsletter. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, as well an established marketer and entrepreneur. A transplanted New Englander, she lives in Chicago with her husband and two boys.

All comments are welcomed.