Davide Longo – författare

Once a year, Corso Bramard receives a message from the man who destroyed his life.He left the police after a serial killer he was tracking murdered his wife and daughter, but fifteen years later he is still taunted by his old adversary. Mocking letters arrive at his home outside Turin, always from a different country, always typed on the same 1972 Olivetti. But this time the killer may have gone too far. A hair left in the envelope of his latest letter provides a vital clue. Bramard is a teacher now - no gun, no badge, just a score to settle. Isa, an academy graduate whose talent just about outweighs her attitude is assigned to fight his corner.They''re a mismatched team, but if they work together they have a chance to unmask the killer before he strikes again - and to uncover a devastating secret that will cut Corso Barmard to the bone.

A chillingly plausible novel about the collapse of Italian society and one man''s struggle to retain his humanity amid the horror"A bleak, lyrical tale that evokes Cormac McCarthy''s The Road.... Gruesome, intense, and strange... a eurozone nightmare brought to life on the page."--James Lovegrove, Financial TimesIt is 2025, and Italy is on the brink of collapse. Borders are closed, banks withhold money, the postal service stalls. Armed gangs of drug-fuelled youths roam the countryside. Leonardo was a famous writer and professor before a sex scandal ended his marriage and career. Heading north in search of her new husband, his ex-wife leaves their daughter and her son in his care. If he is to take them to safety, he will need to find a quality he has never possessed: courage.

"Northern Italy''s answer to Inspector Montalbano" Alessandro BariccoSeptember 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in the countryside near Torino.By the next morning, a task force specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But something doesn''t feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an operation that couldn''t have taken place before the seventies.Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation, enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father.These mismatched allies ­- one at last at peace, one jaded to the point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud ­- will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered up for the second time.Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella