The New Yorker: "Carlotto's taut, broody Mediterranean noir is filled with blind corners and savage set pieces."

Giorgio Pellegrini, the protagonist of a previous Carlotto novel, has put serious criminality behind him. All he wants it to prop up his classy but failing restaurant in the Veneto with his thriving prostitution ring and forget about the past. But when a politician who is also his lawyer and supposed best friend swindles him, placing him under the thumb of the Calabrian Mafia, Pellegrini's desire for revenge awakens an insatiable appetite for blackmail, torture, sexual violence, and murder. Carlotto's taut, broody Mediterranean noir is filled with blind corners and savage set pieces. Pellegrini's deeds are unquestionably loathsome, but his witty Machiavellian perspective, amplified by a class rage well attuned to the current Italian zeitgeist, makes you root for him all the same.