My Italian is a bit rusty, but I believe the loose translation of the title of Valeria Corciolani’s Pentimento Mori is “catnip for art-history majors.” At least, it should be. This entertaining romp accompanies art historian Edna Silvera through the Italian countryside as she tries to solve a murder and unearth the provenance of a mysterious painting found in the victim’s shop. Priority-wise, the killing doesn’t necessarily come first for her.

(For those who like their summer fiction with a PG-13 rating, please note that there’s no actual “romping” in this, Corciolani’s 14th novel but the first to be translated into English.)

Pentimento Mori is the initial offering in a series featuring Silvera and her rarely realized desire to concentrate on the works of Hieronymus Bosch and raise her seven chickens, all of whom refuse to lay eggs while she’s off investigating homicides. The birds aren’t alone in feeling a bit neglected; Edna’s widowed mother, Zara, lays into her whenever she visits:

“‘You look awful!’ Zara greets her daughter cheerfully as soon as she sees her enter. ‘Jonah spat out of the whale would seem to have just returned from a two week stay at the spa compared to you. How do you do it?’

“‘Nice to see you too, Mom,’ Edna exhales, flopping on the sofa. ‘You always find the right words to cheer me up.’

“‘Don’t be sarcastic with me,’ Zara waves her jingling bracelets. ‘If your mother won’t tell you the truth, someone else will. The way you dress, I’m surprised people on the streets don’t try to give you spare change.’”

The book opens with Edna rushing to Zara’s house after the older woman’s most recent caretaker abruptly resigns (after being beaten by Zara with a bottle). In her own defense, Zara points out, the bottle was plastic and probably inflicted only minor damage. The dynamic between mother and daughter is one that Corciolani mines to good comic effect. It also allows the author to bring in another character, Ottavio, a mountain of a man who is a neighbor of Zara’s and one of the few people she’ll listen to. For his part, Ottavio doesn’t mind spending time with Zara in exchange for artworks that she or Edna possess and that he covets for his own collection.

Edna agrees to his asking price of a Pietro Negri engraving in exchange for him keeping an eye on Zara while Edna drives to a neighboring town to begin preparations for a festival marking the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death. She’s not happy about going, and her mood only darkens further when, on the way there, her car hits a branch downed by a storm.

This leads her and the town’s councilor for tourism, Orietta, to an antique store in search of a tool to extricate the limb from her car’s axle. What they find inside sets off a series of events involving, among other things, an enigmatic painting, a dead antiques dealer with his pants around his ankles, a recently resigned housekeeper and her frying pan, an IT wizard, and a detective who proves to be as tenacious as Edna when the coincidences start to pile up like a plate of gnocchi. Every Holmes needs their Lestrade.

Pentimento Mori revolves around art and its history as much as it does murder, motive, and weapon. (If this were a game of Clue, the library would be the room where Miss Scarlett killed with the candlestick.) Edna’s knowledge of art is encyclopedic, and for every brushstroke within the masterpiece she stumbles upon, Corciolani gives readers a correspondingly masterful art-history tidbit that further illuminates the story. I, for one, now know that yellow is so much more than just a Coldplay song.

The author is funny, and her plot moves briskly (and contains a few Easter eggs sure to be enjoyed by anyone who’s ever set foot on the grassy quad at a liberal-arts college). As this is the first in the series, Corciolani is aware of the need to introduce her characters now and flesh out their backstories in greater detail later. As a standalone volume, then, Pentimento Mori doesn’t so much end as serve as an introduction to the ongoing adventures of art-studying, murder-solving Edna Silvera. Her chickens will not be happy.

Drew Gallagher is a freelance writer residing in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He is the first video book reviewer in the 137-year history of the Free Lance-Star Newspaper and is the resident humorist for the FXBG Advance. His columns appear every Sunday here.

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