The Darkest Winter

Bologna, 1944. World-weary Comandante De Luca is tasked with investigating three brutal murders, with the lives of ten Italian hostages on the line. The pitch-black prequel to the Inspector De Luca quartet, by the master of Italian Noir.

In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, in the depths of the war, the bomb-scarred streets are home to starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the SS and the partisans of the Italian Resistance compete for control of the city streets in bloody skirmishes.

Comandante De Luca, who has proved himself 'the most brilliant investigator' in Bologna, but who is now unwillingly working for the Political Police in a building that doubles as a torture facility, finds himself in trouble when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar. De Luca must rapidly unravel all three cases with ten lives on the line: ten Italian hostages who will face a Nazi firing squad if the corporal's killing is not solved to the German command's satisfaction. As he navigates a web of personal and political motivations his life increasingly at risk De Luca will not stop until he has uncovered the dangerous secrets concealed in the frozen heart of his city.

'A brutal evocation of a dystopian past, a stunning winter portrait of the debris and human detritus of wartime Bologna, and a gripping and complex trio of murders.' Peter May

'Imbued with the cruel compromises of a city on the brink of collapse, immersive, evocative and as opaque as the soot-stained snow, this is historical crime fiction at its finest.' Tom Benjamin

'A truly insightful, penetrating and raw portrait of a man and a city ravaged by bloody conflict and the terror of fascism and war.' Paul Burke, European Literature Network

'One of Italy's most acclaimed crime authors.' Barry Forshaw