The large park called Villa Pamphilj in Rome, close to the Vatican City, has two very different faces: by day it’s a paradise for children, athletes, and the elderly; by night it’s the refuge of the homeless, drug addicts, and prostitutes. One freezing dawn in January, one of the ladies of the night is found lifeless, brutally stabbed to death. The victim was around twenty years old, lived on her own, sold her body to pay her college tuition and one day rewrite the script of her life. The murder shocks Inspector Ansaldi and his agents, since it provides a glimpse of the desperation lurking beneath the neighborhood’s placid façade. Moreover, the crime comes at the worst possible time, just two weeks before a delicate political summit between leading European heads of state, when all eyes would be on Italy’s capital. To avoid controversy, the city officials demand a swift investigation and totally under wraps. For the Monteverde Five, it’s going to be a terrifying race against time. François Morlupi made his debut as a novelist in 2018, with the noir Formule Mortali, which won a number of national literary awards in the genre. He also started to contribute to the website Thriller Nord that same year. In 2020, his second novel came out, another noir: Il colbacco di Sofia. In April 2021, he turned out Come delfini tra pescecani, the novel that kicked off the Monteverde Five series and brought him to the attention of the public at large. This title earned Morlupi the Scerbanenco Readers’ Award, an honor he’s receiving this year as well, for Nel nero degli abissi, the second investigation by the neighborhood cops in Rome’s Monteverde district. The protagonists of this series are hardly superheroes; they’re ordinary people. Heading the team is Inspector Biagio Maria Ansaldi, an upstanding professional just over fifty – and well over two hundred pounds. He suffers from anxiety, panic attacks, and hypochondria, and finds relief in his beloved 20th century painters. Indeed, his canine sidekick on every case is named Chagall.

If you ran into them on the street in Turin on a summer’s day, you’d never dream that they were four ex-convicts on the lam from France. And all thanks to a car accident involving the van that had been taking them to the Lyon prison, a pile-up they crawled out of and escaped across the border, and started over. Linked forever by this huge secret. Max Ventura, a former bank robber from Marseille, has opened a restaurant. Thanks to the cooking of his loving companion, there is always a line outside the door. Then there’s Abdel, an Algerian with bright blue eyes and a face etched with the signs of his dissolute past. Ex-thief himself, he runs a repair shop for antique cars. A headful of wild curls coupled with a smoldering gaze, Sanda from Madagascar is the kind of girl you remember. She has a stake in a martial arts gym, and does have the physique du role, after years as a dancer at the Crazy Horse in Paris. Last, there’s the melancholic allure of Victoria from Alsace. Her boyfriend had gotten her involved in a scam and now, broken-hearted, she – and her daughter – are starting over. But one day everything changes – again. An odd individual shows up at Max’s restaurant and calls himself Numero Uno. He’s come to turn their lives upside down with a dangerous scheme that will float their past to the surface. Shattered lives and starting over? Enter an irresistible crew of investigators you won’t be able to go without. Enrico Pandiani is an illustrator and graphic artist whose storytelling career started when he drew comic book stories published in Mondadori’s Mago and the magazine Orient Express. He has worked with the newspaper La Stampa for years, producing its infographics. His debut as a noir novelist goes back to 2009, when he wrote the first book in his saga Les italiens, whose protagonists are a cop squad in Paris and Inspector Mordenti, a jaded and lackadaisical type if there ever was one. The first three installments, Les italiens (2009), Troppo Piombo (2010), and Lezioni di tenebra (2011) were published by Instar Libri. Pandiani switched publishers in 2012, and Rizzoli brought out the fourth installment, Pessime scuse per un massacro. His 2013 novel La donna di troppo launched a new series set in his native Turin, featuring Zara Bosdaves, a former agent from forensics, now private detective, who would return in the 2015 Più sporco della neve. The following year, Pandiani wrote “Un letto di assi”, one of five stories in the collection I semi del male. The year 2016 saw the return of Inspector Mordanti in Una pistola come la tua. The series continued in 2017 with Un giorno di festa and in 2019 with Ragione da vendere. Before Fuoco, Pandiani turned out Il gourmet cena sempre due volte in 2020, and Lontano da casa the year after. Nicolas Winding Refn acts as showrunner and co-producer of

February 2020: while the media reports the first confusing rumors of a virus that is proving fatal in China and seems to have arrived in Italy as well, police headquarters in Milan is dealing with a ghoulish murder that raises the specter of a serial killer on the loose, targeting women and leaving clues that make no sense. The investigation is entrusted to Inspector Mario Mandelli, from the Violent Crime Analysis Unit:  a solid fifty-five-year-old veteran in his field, in love with his wife Isa and her efficiency, and enamored of history as well. Mandelli’s assisted by Inspector Antonio Casalegno, the classic ladies’ man, too rash and impulsive at times on the job; the two men complement each other perfectly. And to solve the crime in time, before the virus spreads further and shuts down operations, every bit of the duo’s intuition and competence will be needed, along with the efforts of the entire investigative team, with its computer nerds, anatomopathologists, and even a Junoesque woman agent and former athlete. Complicating matters, another crime shocks the city: the murder of a well-known jeweler during a robbery. The pressure on the police concentrates the investigation in the space of eight tense days, with surprising twists and lives and love lives intersecting, a feat that turn into a ruthless challenge in which each player risks it all, their lives and their relationships. Winning the challenge will mean proving to themselves and the world that fighting till their last breath, to feel they’re still alive, was worth it. Gian Andrea Cerone has long worked in the fields of communication and traditional, television and digital publishing. Among the many positions he has held, Cerone served as the head of institutional relations at the Ministry of Economic Development as well as for EXPO 2015. In 2018, he founded the publishing platform for Storielibere podcasts. The novel Le notti senza sonno marks his literary debut and is the first book in a series that will hinge on the investigative team at the Violent Crime Analysis Unit in Milan.

Every day at dawn, men and women cross the border between Italy and Switzerland to go to work. They’re called frontalieri, and there are tens of thousands or them. One is Ernesto Magni. Nothing out of the ordinary about his life, really, until he gets fired and his wife walks away, and things take a decidedly nasty turn. Elia Contini, a modest private investigator who lives in the mountains of the Ticino, from where he casts an ironic and jaded eye on the world below, when not working. takes the case. With all his existential angst unresolved, Contini now finds himself in a dark zone that reaches from the lives of the frontalieri to the violent, chaotic world of corrupt businessmen. The noir novel delves into the psychological makeup of the protagonists and lesser characters as it tells a tale of sexual harassment, economic exploitation, and time-old grudges – but also love, tenderness, and intimacy. The events can be seen through the eyes of the imaginary beasts peopling these pages: changeable shapes and reflections of strange, fantastical dreams, the impulse being to either take flight or take refuge in them, holding onto to hope. Andrea Fazioli’s novels Le strade oscure (agosto 2022), Il commissario e la badante (2020), Gli Svizzeri muoiono felici (2018), L’arte del fallimento (2016, La Fenice Europa, Anfiteatro d’Argento awards), Il giudice e la rondine (2014), Uno splendido inganno (2013), La sparizione (2010, La Fenice Europa Award), Come rapinare una banca svizzera (2009), and L’uomo senza casa (2008, Stresa Award, Selezione Comisso Award) were all published by Guanda. His novel Le vacanze di Studer. Un poliziesco ritrovato (2021), based on unpublished writings by Friedrich Glauser translated by Gabriella de’Grandi, was published by Casagrande, along with the story collection Succede sempre qualcosa (2018). Chi muore si rivede (2005) came out with Dadò, and La beata analfabeta (2016) with edizioni San Paolo, while Gabriele Capelli Editore published A Zurigo, sulla luna. Dodici mesi in Paradeplatz (2021), co-authored with Yari Bernasconi. In paperback, Fazioli’s novels are published by TEA. He also wrote a 2015 play called Teoria e pratica della rapina in banca, while the previous year he scripted the web series Notte noir (winner of awards at the Roma Web Fest and the Efebo d’Oro in Palermo).

1905: A sumptuous gala charity event has brought together all the wealthy residents of Cagliari as as a fund-raiser for earthquake victims in Calabria. Clara, the granddaughter of the island’s most important shipowner, is on the guest list, aiming to meet a functionary from the Italian embassy on his return from China, a figure who might have news of her father, gone missing in the Boxer Rebellion. Other guests include the scandal-shrouded Cabras barons, who, on leaving the gala, are assaulted and killed. It looks like a political murder : the baron was hated for governing his many workers with an iron hand. Why, then, would his chauffeur be killed as well? Always eager to assist the weaker members of society, and worried as well about the fate of the young nephew of the barons, whom she feels sympathetic to (and possibly something more), Clara can’t help taking part in the investigation. In the exotic atmosphere of Cagliari over a hundred years ago, with its Punic-era necropolis, its port, its Chinese community in the Marina, and the local mobsters, Clara will uncover a startling truth. Francesco Abate made his literary debut with Mister Dabolina (Castelvecchi, 1998). He followed that up with Il cattivo cronista (Il Maestrale, 2003), Ultima di campionato, from a story that won the Solinas Award (Il Maestrale, 2004 / Frassinelli 2006), Getsemani (Frassinelli, 2006), and I ragazzi di città (Il Maestrale, 2007). Einaudi would publish his novels Mi fido di te (Stile libero 2007 and Super ET 2015), co-written with Massimo Carlotto; Cosí si dice (2008), Chiedo scusa (co-written with Saverio Mastrofranco, Stile libero 2010 and Super ET 2012 and 2017), Un posto anche per me (2013), Mia madre e altre catastrofi (2016), Torpedone trapiantati (2018), and I delitti della salina (2020). Abate is one of the authors included in the charity anthology Sei per la Sardegna (Einaudi 2014, the others being Alessandro De Roma, Marcello Fois, Salvatore Mannuzzu, Michela Murgia, and Paola Soriga).

A film producer, the brother of a powerful former Christian Democrat minister, is found dead in his Jaguar, which turns up in a remote Alpine valley, His wife, a former actress who had made an entire generation swoon, is missing. The investigation falls to Inspector Arcadipane, who has to leave his native Turin and move temporarily up to Clot, a smattering of houses under a dam that squeezes the valley in a noosehold. The villagers are reluctant to talk to him and ornery in general, and the murder case seems uncrackable. Too complicated: he’ll have to call in his old friend and mentor Corso Bramard, and the unruly yet indispensable agent Isa Mancini, both fielding some problems in their private lives. To find out the truth, the three will have to dig deep in old secrets and new self-interests, unraveling the threads woven by a number of hands, until they learn that, for nearly everyone, life pays on Saturday. Davide Longo has directed documentaries, written plays and articles, and scripted Radio Rai programs. His first novel, the 2001 Un mattino a Irgalem (Marcos y Marcos), was reissued by Feltrinelli in 2019 and won the Grinzane Cavour Prize for a first work and the Via Po Award. In 2004, Longo published Il mangiatore di pietre (Marcos y Marcos 2004, Feltrinelli 2016), winner of the City of Bergamo Award and the Viadana Award. He has also written children’s books and on other topics: Il diavolo fa il nido (2003), La vita a un tratto (2006), E più non dimandare (2007, with painter Valerio Berruti), Pirulin senza parole (2008), and La montagna pirata (2019, with artist Fausto Gilberti), all published by Corraini Edizioni. In 2010, Fandango published Longo’s Lucca Award-winning novel L’uomo verticale, while Keller Editore brought out Il signor Mario, Bach e i settanta. They would be followed by Ballata di un amore italiano (Feltrinelli 2011) and Maestro Utrecht (NN editore 2016). In 2014, Longo brought out his first novel featuring the detective duo Arcadipane and Bramard: Il caso Bramard (Feltrinelli 2014, Einaudi 2021). The series continued with Le bestie giovani (Feltrinelli 2018, Einaudi 2021) and Una rabbia semplice (Einaudi 2021). La vita paga il sabato is the fourth installment in the series. Longo wrote the screenplay for the film The Stone Eater (2018) based on his 2004 novel, directed by Nicola Bellucci and starring Luigi Lo Cascio. Longo divides his time between Turin and his chalet in Valle Varaita, whether he created the writers’ residency AlfaBaita. He teaches creative writing at the Scuola Holden and also training courses for teachers on the use of narrative techniques in schools at all levels.