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Maurizio de Giovanni is in total control here, and the result is totally satisfying.

— Seeing The World Through Books, Jun 19 2019

Deep melancholy infuses the crafty whodunit plot of de Giovanni’s superior ninth mystery set in 1930s Italy (after 2017’s Glass Souls). After the corpse of Constantino Irace, the owner of a celebrated fabric store, is discovered on a Naples street, Commissario Luigi Ricciardi...

— Publishers Weekly, Jul 3 2018

Just when you might think Maurizio de Giovanni’s Neapolitan mystery series cannot get much better, he outdoes himself, building on everything he has been doing in the past seven novels in this series and creating this one, his best so far.

— Seeing the World through Books, Jul 18 2017

The publisher of Elena Ferrante and much literary fiction in translation, this trade paperback house is also known for its championship of major European crime novelists, including Jean-Claude Izzo, whose Marseilles trilogy is one of the masterpieces of modern noir, and Maurizio...

— The Washington Post, Jul 5 2017

Glass Souls is by Maurizio de Giovanni. In the abyss of a profound personal crisis, Commissario Ricciardi feels unable to open himself up to life. He has refused the love of both Enrica and Livia and the friendship of his partner, Maione. Contentment for Ricciardi proves as...

— Shots Magazine, Apr 25 2017

Crime fiction isn’t my usual choice, but I’ve been reading Italian literature in the past week, and since this is also set in Naples and came from Europa Editions, I decided to take a break from the more literary style and read this novel classified as ‘world noir‘ (a...

— Word by Word, Apr 16 2017

ROME – A new Naples-set TV crime series, “The Bastards of Pizzofalcone,” is scoring stellar ratings in Italy, grabbing more than one-fourth of the country’s regular viewing audience. Directed by Carlo Carlei (“Fluke,” “Romeo & Juliet,”), one of the few...

— Variety, Feb 13 2017

De Giovanni is a fantastic discovery and I’m looking forward to reading the series from the start as there’s plenty here to enthral the reader.

— Crimepieces, Jan 11 2017

Darkness for the Bastards of Pizzofalcone is the follow on to The Bastards of Pizzofalcone. It has largely the same cast of actors… a group of police misfits and failures who are drafted into the Pizzofalcone precinct office in Naples to replace the former incumbents who were...

— Trip Fiction, Nov 10 2016

Naples, 1931. It is Year Nine of Mussolini's Fascist rule. Men in black uniforms stride through the streets, embodying an ever-present threat of violence. Meanwhile, police inspector Commissario Luigi Ricciardi and his loyal partner Brigadier Raffaele Maione try to avoid politics...

— Exotic and irrational entertainment, Nov 7 2016

Tender noir? Is such a thing possible? Yes — and it adds a richness that many noir novels lack.

— LA Review of Books, Oct 11 2016

Now, in the light of these new events, the commissario came back to this idea with some concern: both because he’d seen with lucid clarity who had killed the Duchess of Camparino and because he was no doubt infected with the same disease that had triggered the murder: jealousy.

— Open Letters Monthly, Jun 20 2016

There are enough positives though to keep an eye out for future instalments in the series.

— Lafriction, Jun 19 2016

One does not enter gently into this story. Instead, one is nearly overwhelmed by the visual and narrative contrasts that attract and repel us. However, the one thing one does not do is stop reading.

— Books are magic, Jun 9 2016

In Naples, two men meet for lunch. They squeeze into a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, above a steep and narrow alley—the sort of space that still defines the old centro—where one declares: “Tell me how anyone can doubt the existence of God after eating a margherita pizza.”...

— Bookforum, Jun 3 2016

One of the most succesful Italian crime fiction writers, Maurizio de Giovanni here takes us into two seemingly unrelated crimes: a kidnapping and a burglary of a high-class apartment. A connection is not made until the inspector Lojacono, known as "The Chairman", starts to work...

— i-Italy, May 31 2016

“These are ingenious crime novels, written with intelligence and enthusiasm. [...] anyone who seeks crime fiction that marries entertainment to illuminating reflections on history and the human condition, will surely find these novels fascinating and compelling.”

— Wall Street Journal, May 27 2016

Highly recommended!

— Echoes of an empty mind, May 17 2016

Dense with characters, the novel is light on action, but if one goal of this novel is to provide an introduction to characters who will repeat in new novels in this series, it is completely successful.

— Seeing the World through Books, Apr 6 2016

A new series of hardboiled crime fiction set in contemporary Naples by the author of the internationally bestselling Commissario Ricciardi series. They've made a fresh start at the Pizzofalcone precinct of Naples. They fired every member of the investigative branch after they...

— Pulp Den, Feb 15 2016