Times are tough for police inspector Nives Bonora. Somebody shot her work partner Pizzi, seriously wounding him, and she was the one who saved his life. Yet now Commissioner Brandi wants her kept out of the investigation, and their up-and-down relationship is more down than up. In addition, Nives’ family microcosm, made up of her, her father, and grandmother, is shaken up by someone’s unexpected return on the scene. Inspector Bonora is not the type who gives up, however. She launches into a dizzying investigation of her own that will reveal the unspeakable horrors hidden behind the respectable façade of the province of Ferrara.

Cinzia Bomoll’s literary debut was a story in the 1998 collection Quello che ho da dirvi. She has published the novels Lei che nelle foto non sorrideva (2006), 69 (2011), and Cuori a spigoli (2019). She is also a screenwriter (winner of the 2020 Solinas Award) and film and television director. She has made three feature films: Il segreto di Rahil (2007), Let’s Dance (2010), and La California (2022), selected for the Freestyle section of the 17th Rome Film Fest. La ragazza che non c’era, her first mystery novel, introduces the character Nives Bonora, a plain-speaking, often brazen police inspector who likes to break the rules and has her pangs of conscience, but can always rely on her instinctive and steadfast sense of justice.