Marco Vincenti is weary of his job as a surveyor, which he considers these days to be an exercise in bureaucratic box-ticking. When he inherits a hotel in the small town of Casciana Terme in Tuscany, he decides it's time for a new career. Among his first guests is a man named Corrado Fantozzi, whom Marco nicknames "Mr Lean" for his demeanour and his dashing figure.Fantozzi is always to be seen carrying a briefcase, and the nature of his work appears somewhat shady.Two days later, Marco finds Fantozzi dead in his bed in Room 106, and there's no sign of the briefcase.Maurizio Castellani was born in 1959 in the province of Pisa/Tuscany, where he is self-employed. His work is in Italy and overseas, and he spent three years in Dakar working on social housing.Family, food and the sea are the three loves of his life.The Briefcase is his first detective novel, in which the investigation combines with the landscapes of Tuscany, great food and attractive women.