Little Spark by Jo Turner

 Stuck in the little town of Cannero on beautiful Lake Maggiore, Italy, Eva dreams of being a makeup artist in the US. Instead, she helps her mother make clothes for wealthy women, and prepares people for burial for Padre Giacomo. One day after making up a man for burial who has only one mourner, she meets a mysterious Englishman outside the church, who wants her to investigate his death. Soon afterwards, she meets a wealthy girl her age who loves Agatha Christie, and starts sending her messages in code. Could the two be related? Why is Mussolini interested in her sewing?

This is an exciting but strange book, which is quite hard to out down. I felt that Eva seemed a bit cold and materialistic, and that the plot was fairly obscure. It was also very open-ended, so I will read the sequel. The wartime background was realistically portrayed, and I loved the setting, which is almost like another character in the book. I have been to Lake Maggiore, and the Borromeo Palace, which features in the book, so I could easily picture them in my mind.

I won this through the Early Reviewers competition at LibraryThing.