The powerful Swiss broker Rufus Blom, on his usual dawn run in the hills of the Langhe, comes across the body of a young woman. On her back, the killer has left a message written in blood: a swastika and a surname. His: Blom. Few clues in the vicinity and big problems for Inspector Gualtiero Bova, nicknamed the Penguin and only recently transferred to Mondovì. Nobody seems to know who the girl is, or why her corpse was used to send a threatening message to Blom. The Penguin may have landed in these hills as a punishment, an exile disguised as a promotion, but he’s not the kind of person to let that get him down. Out he goes with his faithful basset hound Gilda and his pipe, to figure out who the victim was and what her link was to the Blom family, which seems to have its share of secrets.

Orso Tosco was born in Ospedaletti and lives in Liguria’s “Far West”. A writer, poet, and screenwriter, he works with l’Officina del Podcast. His novel Aspettando i naufraghi (2018) and another co-written with Cosimo Argentina, Dall’inferno. Due reportage letterari (2021), were published by minimum fax, as was London voodoo (2022). In 2023, his book Nanga Parbat. L’ossessione e la montagna nuda came out with 66thand2nd. A collection of Tosco’s poetry, Figure amate, was published by Interno Poesia in 2019.