Authors
Maurizio De GiovanniRicciardi has visions. He sees and hears the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in the Naples police force. But the horror and suffering he has seen has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks too much and sleeps too little. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends.
We're in Naples, 1931. In a working class apartment in the Sanita' neighborhood an elderly woman by the name of Carmela Calise has been viciously beaten to death. Commissario Ricciardi and Briadier Maione arrive at the scene and start asking questions. No one wants to talk but slowly the neighbors let a few intriguing facts slip. Carmela Calise was moonlighting as a fortuneteller and moneylender. In her decrepit apartment she would receive clients, among them some of the city's rich and powerful, predicting their futures in such a way as to manipulate and deceive. If economic ruin lurked in their futures, Calise was happy to help by offering a loan. For a price, of course. She had many enemies, those who were indebted to her, or had been manipulated by her lies, disappointed by her prophesies, or destroyed by her devilish machinations. Murder suspects abound in this atmospheric thriller set in Naples during the rise of Fascism.
