Booklist: "The moral ambiguity at the heart of Italy's postwar power struggle permeates the action in this tense, atmospheric tale."

The second in the De Luca Trilogy to appear in the U.S. is set in 1946 and finds the former Commisario De Luca dodging partisan reprisals for the role he played as a member of the secret police under Mussolini. When he’s recognized by a partisan in an isolated village between Bologna and Rome, De Luca—torn between the need to keep a low profile and the inevitable curiosity he feels in the face of an unsolved crime—reluctantly agrees to help investigate a double murder with political implications. The moral ambiguity at the heart of Italy’s postwar power struggle permeates the action in this tense, atmospheric tale. The hero’s own ambiguity about his actions during the war, as well as his cynical view of the postwar world, links him to other ideologically imperiled investigators (Arkady Renko in Martin Cruz Smith’s Moscow-set series, for example), but the most notable aspect of this trilogy is Lucarelli’s ability to give texture to a particular historical moment.