Signatures in Stone

2014 overall winner DAPHNE DU MAURIER AWARD for Excellence in Mystery/ Suspense! American novelist Linda Lappin, author of the Indie classic, The Etruscan, takes up the mystery of the Monster Park of Bomarzo in her new novel SIGNATURES IN STONE set in Bomarzo in 1927, when four unlikely misfits find themselves entangled in the meanders of the park. Daphne, a mystery writer with a hashish habit; Clive, an American gigolo and art forger; Nigel, an English aristocrat down at the heels; and Finestone, a fly-by-night art historian, are thrown together in a decrepit villa looked after by two Italian servants who are not what they seem. Each character will find his or her own hell hidden in the park, and not everyone will make it out alive. Through the deforming mirror of the Bomarzo sculptures, Daphne will face up to the darker sides of herself while solving a murder for which she has been unjustly accused. Unraveling that mystery, she unwittingly solves another, who designed the Monster Park and why. Perfect summer reading for a plane trip or the beach, SIGNATURES IN STONE tells a story of secrets, forgery and murder, and shows how waking life, intuition, and dream are much more interfused than we normally admit.

"Lappin is a modern day Agatha Christie with prose that is like eating dark chocolate or sipping a glass of fine wine — the story continues to entice your senses and simply gets better and better the more you partake. Not one to hurry to the plot she unveils the scenes piece by piece, character by character and leaves her own signatures for you to find along the way." Vikki Walton, I LOVE A MYSTERY