Giancarlo De Cataldo

In the night of Rome, nothing is what it seems. It’s all change in Rome. The new Pope, determined to bring radical reform to the Vatican, proclaims an extraordinary Jubilee year of Mercy. A new centre-left government replaces its disgraced predecessor, and sets about to rejuvenate the language of politics. And with crime lynchpin Samurai in jail, his protégé Sebastiano Laurenti attempts to establish himself as his designated successor. But he must reckon not only with a new generation of enterprising gangsters and racketeers—out to carve for themselves a slice of the profits and opportunities offered by the major public works planned for the Jubilee—but also with ambitious newly elected politician Chiara Visoni, and his own heart. Betrayals, alliances forged and broken, ambushes and infighting will inevitably alter the fragile political balance. As the sharks circle and the street-dogs fight, some tenuous hope endures, in the unlikely alliance of an incorruptible politician of the old left, all but forgotten, and a young bishop who refuses to play the Vatican’s power games. But it remains to be seen whether the long night of Rome can make room for redemption. Sharp and fast-paced, dark and taut, The Night of Rome is fiction that sails dangerously close to the wind of current events.

In this fast-paced crime thriller, criminals on the rise and senior members of the Italian mafia clash in and around Rome over the backing of an urban development bill that promises to turn the seaside town of Ostia into a gambling paradise. Everybody wants a cut, but when the son of a feared Ostia gangster is brutally stabbed in the street, the safeties come off and all-out war is sparked. Each vote for the bill, will either be caused by blood or bought by way of bribery.

In Carlotto's The Campagna Trail, Inspector Campagna uses an old friendship with notorious drug dealer Roby Pizzo in a Machiavellian attempt to keep the peace. But when an interfering new police chief demands Campagna bring down the Mafioso who heads Pizzo’s gang, Campagna must use every weapon he has to save his job – and his life.Meanwhile in Carofiglio's The Speed of an Angel, a writer in crisis strikes up an unlikely friendship with a mysterious woman he meets in a quiet seaside café. As their conversations deepen, and their obsessions darken, their drug-fuelled relationship begins to spiral, in this haunting tale of damnation and redemption. Finally in De Cataldo's The White Powder Dance, the city police are put on the trail of a baby-faced new graduate in the Milanese banking sector. As the pursuit accelerates through back streets and skyscrapers, it becomes clear that there is more to organised crime than getting your hands dirty.

It is 1977. A new force is terrorising Rome - a mob of reckless, ultraviolent youths known as La Banda della Magliana. As the gang ruthlessly take control of Rome's heroin trade, they begin an inexorable rise to power. Banda della Magliana intend to own the streets of Rome - unless their internal struggles tear them apart. Based on Rome's modern gangland history, Romanzo Criminale fearlessly confronts Italy's Age of Lead: war on the streets and terrorism, kidnappings and corruption at the highest levels of government.

Camilleri, best known for his Inspector Montalbano series, presents the charming Judge Surra who moves to a small Sicilian town in the late nineteenth century. He does not quite understand the quirky welcoming gifts from the locals, but nothing stands in the way of his quest for justice - and pastries. Lucarelli brings us a far darker story. Judge Valentina Lorenzi - La Bambina - is so young and inexperienced she hardly merits a bodyguard. But when she barely survives an assassin's bullet, her black-and-white world of crime and punishment turns a deathly shade of grey. In The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor, De Cataldo, a judge himself, crafts a Kafkaesque tale of a lifelong feud between Prosecutor Mandati and the corrupt Mayor of Novere. When the mayor narrowly escapes a series of bizarre assassination attempts, Mandati begins to realise that all his dreams may just be coming true. From Italy's premiere crime authors, three novellas from every tradition of crime writing.

Italy's best crime writers present nine gripping, often darkly humorous short-stories with settings ranging from Milan to Palermo by way of Rome and even Guadeloupe. These brilliant tales do not feature psychopathic cannibals or obscure power-mad sects but ordinary criminals: a drug-addled cosmetic surgeon, inept blackmailers and various other low-lifes lusting after easy money.