GLOUCESTER, Mass. - s4story -- Set in 1945, the premise of the fifteenth Tony Del Plato mystery revolves around a novice nun gone missing from a New Hampshire convent. Tony is hired to find her by the young woman's brother, a restaurateur in Essex County, Massachusetts, where most of the story takes place.

What Tony doesn't bargain for is finding out that the restaurateur and the missing nun are the nephew and niece of mob boss, Filippo "Phil" Buccola. In real life, Buccola ruled New England's crime family for more than twenty years until he retired to Sicily in 1954 to operate a winery and chicken farm. He died of natural causes at the age of 101. Buccola was a rather low-key shadowy figure about whom much personal information was difficult to find. Yet Dandola has fleshed him out quite believably and sympathetically.

The synopsis:

April, 1945.

During Easter break from college, Patty Drury and Tony Del Plato travel to Hollywood where Patty films a cameo opposite actress Jeff Donnell in the Patty Drury movie series.

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Upon returning East, Tony is asked to find a friend's missing sister. While tracking down the young woman is a fairly simple task, untangling her from a money swindle and the Boston mob is quite a complicated matter. On top of that, Tony doesn't trust the young woman's fiancé, a disabled Army vet.

What comes across, as in all of Dandola's stories, is his love of locale and his crisp dialogue. His fondness for Gloucester and Cape Ann came about while writing the two-volume biography of John Hays Hammond, Jr. In fact, the inventor has been making appearances in these novels since the third one in the series. He's in this one. The photo on the book's front cover is of Searles Castle in Windham, New Hampshire, which was the inspiration for the convent in the story. It was under the auspices of the Sisters of Mercy until 2019

Dead Losses is 200 pages and priced at $18.95. Following the lead of so many other small  publishing houses, it is not available at Amazon.com. For easy and secure publisher-direct sales go to https://www.quincannongroup.com/DelPlatoMysteries.html