A dark-suited man is shot dead as he runs for a bus in the piazza of a small town. The investigating officer suspects the mafia, and soon finds himself up against a wall of silence and vested interests. As he uncovers a chain of nasty crimes, bystanders and watchers, complicit with secret power, gossip among themselves. Their furtive conversations have only one end: to stop the truth coming out.
This short novel about the mafia is also a mesmerising demonstration of how that organisation sustains itself.
