Franco R. Westley

I should probably start with two confessions.

First: I'm not a chef. I write about them—about their knives, their techniques, their obsessive relationships with ingredients—but my own kitchen skills are… let's call them "enthusiastically amateur." As an Italian, I was born with strong opinions about food (it's genetic, I think), but executing those opinions at a professional level? That's a work in progress.

Second: Murder ą la Polonaise isn't the first novel I've written. It's the first one I'm publishing.

The earlier attempts? They taught me everything I needed to learn about writing novels—mostly by showing me all the ways to get it wrong. Characters who didn't quite work. Plots that collapsed under their own complexity. Themes that sounded profound in my head but landed flat on the page. Each of those unpublished manuscripts was a necessary apprenticeship, preparing me for the story I actually needed to tell.

And that story came from an unexpected place: performing improv comedy with my troupe, Fulano, at Hoopla Improv in London. None of us are native English speakers. We're Italian, Spanish, Polish, French—all fumbling through comedy in our second (or third) language, finding humor in the spaces between words, in the moments where cultural references don't quite translate.

And I realized: that's where mysteries live. In those gaps between languages. In the misunderstandings that seem trivial until someone ends up dead. In kitchens where recipes carry family secrets and restaurants become fronts for something darker than bad service.

So I created Matteo Bellini—a chef far more talented than I'll ever be—and sent him to Kraków to investigate a restaurant that failed for all the wrong reasons. This time, everything clicked. The characters felt real. The plot held together. The themes about cultural clash and food as bridge emerged naturally rather than being forced.

This was the novel I'd been learning to write.

I write whenever inspiration strikes (which means irregular hours and a lot of late-night typing). Between writing sessions, I work in supply chain quality management, where attention to detail serves me well both professionally and in plotting murders. And when I need to understand a culture, I do what any sensible person would: I find its best restaurants. Asian, Eastern European, Middle Eastern—London's culinary diversity has become my research laboratory, one meal at a time.

If you've ever felt caught between languages, or wondered what really happens behind restaurant doors, or simply believe that food reveals more about people than any interrogation ever could—welcome to The Bellini-Zielińska Mysteries.

Matteo and Ania are flawed, they're learning as they go, and they're definitely not sure they'll survive their curiosity. (Much like me with those earlier unpublished novels.)

But the food? The food is always worth it.

— Franco R. Westley

Somewhere near London, probably eating something delicious

P.S. If you're in London and want to see what improv comedy sounds like when nobody's quite fluent, catch Fulano at Hoopla Improv (The Bell, near Liverpool Street). Fair warning: our murders are better plotted than our punchlines.