A Breath Of Frost

The discovery of a dead body shatters the tranquillity of a Cotswold village in Ann Granger’s second Campbell and Carter mystery. When old Monty Bickerstaffe finds a dead body in his drawing room it comes as a nasty surprise – the first of many.

This book traces the Mafia’s beginnings from an underground patriotic society which sprang up six hundred years ago in Sisily, through the group of Italian immigrants – the Black Hand – Who savagely tore control of New York’s waterfronts away from Irish racketeers, to the Mob which went on to run organized crime throughout Italy and America. Drawing on previously unavailable information and nearly two decades of research, William Balsamo – great-nephew of the first godfather – and George Carpozi Jr. trace the Black Hand’s coalescence into an organization whose insidious influence reached across the Atlantic and into a presidential administration. And they go behind the headlines to reveal with chilling clarity the true extent of the Mafia’s influence today.

The memories, surprises and forced conversations prompted by the close confines of the drive reveal more about the compromises of their shared life than they would care to confess.