Blood Curse: The Springtime of Commissario Ricciardi (Commissario Ricciardi, 2)

Commissario Ricciardi has visions. He sees and hears the final seconds in the lives of victims of violent deaths. It is both a gift and a curse. It has helped him become one of the most acute and successful homicide detectives in the Naples police force.

But all that horror and suffering has hollowed him out emotionally. He drinks and doesn’t sleep. Other than his loyal partner, Brigadier Maione, he has no friends. Naples, 1931. In a working-class apartment in the Sanità neighbourhood, an elderly woman by the name of Carmela Calise has been beaten to death. When Ricciardi and Maione arrive at the scene, they learn that Calise was moonlighting as a fortuneteller and moneylender whose clients were some of the city’s rich and powerful.

She predicted their futures in such a way as to manipulate and deceive and made many enemies―those indebted to her, swayed by her lies, disappointed by her prophecies or destroyed by her machinations.

Murder suspects in this atmospheric thriller abound and Commissario Ricciardi, one of the most original and intriguing investigators in contemporary crime fiction, will have his work cut out for him.