Murder at the Duomo is the 14th Armstrong and Oscar cozy destination procedural mystery by T.A. Williams. Released 2nd Feb 2026 by Boldwood, it's 240 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, audio, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free. The other books in the series are also currently available on KU.
This is a beautifully descriptive and well written destination mystery set in Tuscany. Expat former policeman Dan Armstrong and his trusty canine sidekick Oscar are again drawn into an investigation, in an odd/impossible murder set in a world famous church and in the lavish villa of an international arms dealer.
The plotting is solid and the dialogue and characterizations are three dimensional and believable. The mystery, denouement, and resolution are self contained in this volume, so it works well enough as a standalone, but the writing is so well planned and executed, that it would make an excellent long binge or buddy read. It would also fit really well in a longer term project for a mystery book club "destination mystery" type project. The overall quality of the entire series remains entertaining and engaging throughout.
The unabridged audiobook has a run time of 6 hours 26 minutes and is capably read by series narrator Simon Mattacks. He has a beautifully modulated classically trained light baritone voice and does a great job of delineating a range of characters of both sexes and a number of regional accents (including amongst others, German, American, and several Italian), shifting quickly and flawlessly. Sound and production quality are high throughout the read.
It's not derivative at all, but it calls to mind in a lot of good ways, Leon's exceptional Brunetti books as well as Walker's lovely Bruno, chief of police books. Fans of those authors will find a lot to enjoy here.
Four stars. Highly recommended.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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