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Praise for Holy Smoke, the first in the Antoine series:

';A terrific black comedy both a blasphemously funny satire of provincial Italian chicanery and a wry acknowledgment of the ambivalence that ambitious immigrants feel about their roots.'The New York Times

';Unexpected deadly demands made in the name of friendship inspire the plot of this quirky mystery novel. Irreverently inveighs against romantic love, cancer and the Paris suburbs.'The Washington Post

';An iconoclastic chronicle of small-time crooks and desperate capers, with added Gallic and Italian flair. Wonderful fun.'Guardian

Antoine, a fanatic billiards player, is asked to watch over a Paris art gallery. When he scuffles with a thief a statue falls and severs his right hand. His maverick investigation leads to the discovery of a series of gruesome killings. Soon Antoine finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of a gallery owner. A game of billiards decides the outcome of this satirical tale which brilliantly captures the world of modern art and the parasites that infest it.

After being, in turn, a museum night-watchman, and a train guard on the Paris-Rome line, Tonino Benacquista is now a highly successful author of fiction and film scripts.