Tantalising…
The second outing for Daniel Leicester and truffle season is well underway in the hilled areas of Bologna. When an American truffle hunter disappears the stakes are raised as Daniel himself comes under suspicion. Beautifully written and an ode to Bologna, the food and the people as much as it is a tantalising mystery perfectly drawn.

I'm loving this excellent mystery series, it's well written and engrossing.
The descriptions and the setting are realistic (trust me I'm Italian), the mystery is solid and full of twists.
I can't wait to read another book in this series.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I really enjoy this series and the setting. Oh and this one introduces you to the mysteries of the truffle season! Now that was interesting!
A good read if you are looking for a crime novel in a nice location and some foodie links!

This is a gentle mystery set in Italy, Bologna to be precise. Daniel Leicester, a private investigator working for his father in law’s firm, is asked to find missing food and truffle taster Ryan Lee. Ryan’s parents have travelled from the US to meet their son and he fails to turn up to collect them at the airport. Usually reliable they cannot understand where he is and Daniel is recommended as an English speaking Detective who might be able to help.
The premise of this book was good and the setting was well described but there was a lot of extraneous detail about Italian customs and food which really slowed down the pace of the novel and did not encourage me as a reader to pick up the book. I skim read quite a lot of the detailed descriptions in order to get back into the plot side of the novel. Maybe some judicious editing is required.
There were also an awful lot of characters and by the time we got to the big reveal I was hard placed to remember who the actual culprit was and where he fitted in.
I think this could have been a compelling read without so much information about matters that were really not relevant to the story. I liked Daniel Leicester as the widowed investigator with a teenage daughter and the first person narration helped the reader to get to know him and his circumstances as well as his extended family who all worked in the Detective business. This part of the novel was extremely well done.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my arc in exchange for an honest review.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for a review copy of The Hunting Season, the second novel to feature private investigator Daniel Leicester, an Englishman living and working in Bologna.

Daniel is approached by Mr and Mrs Lee, Americans in Bologna to meet their son Ryan, to help them find Ryan who wasn’t at the airport to meet them and seems to have disappeared. Ryan is a supertaster, someone who can identify minute differences in food, and is in Italy for the truffles. Why, no one is saying but Daniel will find out.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Hunting Season, which is as much about Bologna and food as it is about murder and investigation. Quite often I find this kind of balance distracting, preferring the author to concentrate on the investigation, but I was engrossed throughout. Bologna is now on my bucket list of places to visit.

The novel is told entirely from Daniel’s point of view, another plus for me, so the reader can identify and live the investigation with him. It’s a clever move by the author as he gives an outsider’s view of Italy in all its glory with an inhabitant’s experience of living it. I found the plot equally engrossing with its unusual theme of truffles and big business. I’m not enough of a foodie to know much about truffles, but this is not the first novel I have read about them and their value, so while I think it’s an awful fuss over a glorified mushroom I appreciate the money and passion involved.

The plot follows Daniel in his hunt for Ryan and with clues thin on the ground he will use all means possible to find him, both legal and illegal, and this ends up with him arrested for murder. How he gets out of that is particularly Italian, some rule bending, some influence and dogged determination.

The Hunting Season is a good read that I have no hesitation in recommending.