Sergeant Mirko Stankovic has been ‘exiled’ to a remote village between the mountains of Sardinia’s Barbagia region and the sea, where nothing ever happens. He’s always been allergic to the rules, and after breaking his last, he’s been punished with this transfer. When he sets foot in his new office in Santa Lucia, which looks like an eatery’s cellar more than police premises, he starts thinking that his life full of action and excitement is behind him. Not yet, it turns out: a few days later, the body of woman is found inside a cave, half submerged in water. The victim, Marcella Ferrante, was the daughter of a local businessman, Manuel Ferrante, owner of one of the most exclusive clubs on the Costa Smeralda.

Elias Mandreu was born in Nuoro in 1968, in 1969, and in 1973: a man with three lives, one as a public administrator, one as a magistrate, and in the third, a mechanical engineer. In all three of these existences, Elias Mandreu is also an author, whose novels Nero riflesso and Dopotutto were published by Maestrale, and whose stories appear in two anthologies published by Piemme: Giallo Sardo and Giallo sardo 2, edited by Francesco Abate.