The idea for Murder Italian Style came from a funny comment my sister-in-law passed on to me. This story is available in Murder New York Style: Family Matters, an anthology of short stories published by the New York/Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime.
As Detective Chiara Corelli enters the station, a crowd is cheering an overweight, waiting-to-retire uniform assigned to the front desk grappling with a corpulent woman flogging him with her purse. The woman is shouting in Italian, ‘my son is dead.”
After she calms the woman down, Corelli learns that the woman’s sixty-nine- year- old son died from a massive heart attack, but the woman claims his mother-in-law murdered her baby. The woman insists if the police don’t investigate, she’ll go to the press.
Corelli consults with her superior and is told to investigate but don’t spend too much time.