The Cold Summer

KIRKUS:"Carofiglio’s engaging main character. Fenoglio is a sensitive, polished figure who has managed to keep his idealism intact in a career meant to break it; he is as comfortable philosophizing as he is citing the public safety code. When he recalls a joke about a drunkard searching for his keys under a streetlight rather than in the dark street where he lost them, he realizes his search is failing for the same reason: “We look where it’s light, even though that’s exactly how not to solve the problem." Solving this case, Carofiglio shows us, requires a leap into the darkness.

PW: This is sure to win Carofiglio, a former prosecutor who specialized in organized crime, a wider U.S. audience.

CrimeTime: Who better to tell you how the Mafia works than the man who in real life was an Italian prosecutor and advisor to the government’s anti-Mafia Committee? This at times meditative book teaches us much about gangland’s childish rituals and Italian police procedure but still racks up some tension before its realistic conclusion. It’s a book for adult readers, about gangsters who are little more than viscously bad boys.