Pitch-black Italian Noir, set in 1944 Bologna. World-weary Comandante De Luca is tasked with investigating three brutal murders – with the lives of ten Italian hostages on the line. ‘A stripped-down historical thriller loaded with tension’ La Repubblica ______ In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, less than a year since the founding of the Republic of Salò, the bomb-scarred streets are filled with starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the S.S. and the partisans of the Italian Resistance compete for control in bloody warfare. Comandante De Luca, once “the most brilliant investigative officer in Bologna” and now working for the Political Police in a building that doubles as a torture facility, finds himself in over his head when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar. Losing
