Kill the Father

Dazieri’s dazzling U.S. debut, the first in a series, introduces Deputy Capt. Colomba Caselli, a Rome police detective recuperating from major work-related PTSD, and Dante Torre, a near-incapacitated claustrophobic private consultant on missing-person cases. Caselli, who’s tough as nails but deeply injured by guilt over her role in a Paris bombing, is contemplating resigning from the police, but she feels she owes it to her boss to investigate the decapitation of a young mother and the disappearance of the woman’s preteen son. Torre is drawn into the case because in his own youth he was held captive for years in a silo by an unknown captor he called Father. Torre and Colomba, both driven by rage and revenge, make a convoluted descent into an abyss of child abductions, gang-related crime, government cover-ups, and international terrorism. Told in brutal, often wrenching detail, this is not an odyssey for the faint of heart. [em]Agent: Laura Grandi, Grandi e Associati (Italy). (Jan.) [/em]