Auntie Poldi and the vineyards of Etna

In Giordano's sharp, hilarious follow-up to 2016's Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, Isolde "Poldi" Oberreiter, a 60-something Bavarian with a penchant for wigs who has settled in the charming Sicilian village of Torre Archirafi, suspects Mafia involvement when water to her neighborhood is shut off and a friend's dog is poisoned. Her investigation leads her to a vineyard, where she discovers the body of a well-known local fortune-teller. She inserts herself into the subsequent murder investigation. Meanwhile, her romance with Chief Insp. Vito Montana, who's in charge of homicide cases, continues to smolder. While the interplay between Poldi and her ne'er-do-well German nephew-the book's anonymous narrator, who stays with her periodically in Torre Archirafi-is particularly fun and well executed, even better are the humorous observations on the quirks of Sicilian life. Readers will look forward to the further adventures of the irrepressible Auntie Poldi. Agent: Jason Bartholomew, BKS Agency (U.K.). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

When Auntie Poldi loses her inner equilibrium, it takes a volcano to restore her to balance.Having decided after all not to drink herself to death with a comfortable view of the sea (Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions, 2015), Bavarian expatriate Isolde Oberreiter has settled into a pleasant routine in her villa in Torre Archirafi. Mondays: the beach. Tuesdays: the fish market with Uncle Martino. Wednesdays: language school in Taormina. Thursdays: tea with her neighbor Valrie. Fridays, sex with Commissario Vito Montana. Saturdays: gin rummy with Signora Cocuzza and Padre Paolo. But routines can do only so much to tame a force of nature like Poldi, as she is known to her family, friends, and neighbors, which include the entire population of Torre Archirafi and a good bit of neighboring Catania. Soon she's on a quest: to find out who killed Lady, Valrie's scruffy, gentle mongrel. Vito inadvertently provides her first clue. Invested in a brand of pillow talk only he and Poldi could devise, he concludes one Friday afternoon's adventures with an account of the death of Elisa Puglisi, a member of Catania's provincial Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia, who was conked by a bottle of Polifemo. Well, anyone depraved enough to kill a district attorney might do the same to a defenseless animal, and next thing you know, Poldi is riding her multicolored Vespa up the slopes of Etna to the Avola vineyard, the source of the bottle that put a premature end to Puglisi's career. And because Poldi "was just not made for compromises, for the grey areas of life, for rear-view mirrors, loopholes or get-out clauses," she pushes forward to an encounter with a winemaker that proves as explosive as the hill beneath her feet.Giordano gives his heroine's second outing as much punch as her debut. Long may she reign. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.