Inspector Carlo De Vincenzi, the cult police detective created by Augusto De Angelis during the fascist era, is the protagonist of the fifth novel in a series through which Crovi has been paying homage to him since 2018. In this latest adventure, the phlegmatic investigator, nicknamed “the poet of crime”, needs to find the truth about a daredevil feat, the disappearance of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in Paris, and another theft that, twenty years later, mysteriously involved Italy’s Warrior Bard, Gabriele D’Annunzio. The irony being that, for him to crack one of the toughest cases of his career, the cool-headed De Vincenzi will need the help of an icon of speed racing: Tazio Nuvolari.

Luca Crovi, an author and journalist who is an expert on noir novels, has always worked with various daily newspapers and magazines. In 2002, his monograph on the genre, Tutti i colori del giallo, was published by Marsilio and turned into the radio program of the same name on Radiodue (running until 2011). Crovi has also written other studies like Noir. Istruzioni per l’uso (Garzanti, 2013) and Storia del giallo italiano (Marsilio, 2020), and anthologies such as L’occhio dell’assassino and (Rizzoli, 2021). He has five novels to his credit: L’ombra del campione (2018), L’ultima canzone del Naviglio (2020), Il Gigante e la Madonnina (2022), Il mistero della torre del parco e altre storie (2022), and La velocità della tartaruga (2024).