The Year of Our Lord 1793 in the Granduchy of Tuscany. A castle built over an ancient abbey, a corpse wrapped in the vines of a large vineyard. In the pale light of a winter dawn, Baron Calendimarca’s snow-covered vineyards have become the scene of a crime, one that is not only inexplicable but also a dishonor on the nobleman’s family name. Vitale Federici and his devoted right-hand man Bernardo Della Vipera find themselves investigating a crime for which the motives seem to point to the time-old winemaking tradition of the baron’s family and its wine cellar: like a library, the wine cellar very likely harbors a clue to the killer’s identity.

Marcello Simoni has published a number of history books and also has a horror story in the anthology 365 racconti horror per un anno, edited by Franco Forte (2011). His first novel, Il mercante di libri maledetti (2011), won the Bancarella Prize. His second, in 2012, was La biblioteca perduta dell’alchimista, while the year 2013 saw a double-header: Il labirinto ai confini del mondo and L’isola dei monaci senza nome. In 2014 his novel L’abbazia dei cento peccati and short story La prigione delle anime were published, this last in the anthology Delitti di Capodanno. In 2016 and 2018, respectively, two titles came out: Il marchio dell’inquisitore and Il monastero delle ombre perdute. Since then Simoni has turned out one title a year: Il lupo nell’abbazia (2019), La selva degli impiccati (2020), Angeli e diavoli (2021), La profezia delle pagine perdute (2021), La cattedrale dei morti (2022), and La taverna degli assassini (2023).