Young Beasts at Play

A mass grave is the first clue to a breathtaking conspiracy: a subtle, intelligent noir from one of Italy's most exciting writers

"A superior police procedural" Mark Sanderson, The Times Crime Club

"Northern Italy's answer to Inspector Montalbano" Alessandro Baricco

September 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in the countryside near Torino.

By the next morning, a task force specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But something doesn't feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an operation that couldn't have taken place before the seventies.

Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation, enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father.

These mismatched allies - one at last at peace, one jaded to the point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud - will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered up for the second time.

Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella