Author David Downie will present his mystery series, the Daria Vinci Mysteries, on Wednesday, November 16th. There will be a reception at 5:30 and a reading at 6:00. David is well known for his non-fiction writing that focuses on travel in Europe, especially along the Rivera. In his mysteries, he uses his knowledge of the region to serve as a background to his fast paced thrillers. Commissioner Daria Vinci, a half-American outsider and the unlikely rising star of Genoa’s secretive Special Operations Directorate DIGOS, must solve crimes like she has never seen before. In Red Riviera, she must face down a Fascist police chief and fanatical coup-plotter, the CIA’s creepy local mastermind, a former World War Two Spitfire fighter pilot, and a plucky hundred-year-old marquise whose memory is as long as it is vengeful. In Roman Roulette, the commissioner must investigate what, at first, seems a simple case of suicide, but as she proceeds, she attracts the attention of her boss, the Questor of the Province of Rome, who wants her off the case. Now Daria Vinci must solve the murder in only thirty-six hours, risking her career and, possibly, her life.   

Award-winning author David Downie grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, lived in Rome as a child, studied abroad in Italy, and graduated from UC Berkeley then Brown University. He lived for a time in the High Sierra of California, working at a ski resort. Downie moved to Italy and France in the mid-1980s. For several decades, his newspaper and magazine writing appeared worldwide in dozens of publications. He’s the author of nearly 20 fiction and nonfiction books, several of them translated into French, Italian, Chinese, and Korean. Downie divides his time between Italy and France.