Leone Scamarcio Series

Detective Leone Scamarcio, the son of a former leading mafioso, has turned his back on the family business, and has joined the Rome police force. He may be one of the last honest men in Italy. But when Scamarcio is handed a file of extremely compromising photographs of a high-profile Italian politician, and told to ‘deal with it’, he knows he’s in for trouble. And when a young man is found stabbed to death in Rome, and a young American girl disappears on a beach in Elba, Scamarcio’s job gets a whole lot more complicated. Worst of all, every lead seems to implicate the prime minister — a multi-media baron, and the most powerful man in Italy. As the case spins out of control, and his own past catches up with him, Scamarcio must navigate the darkest currents of Italian society — only to find that nothing is as it seems, and that the price of truth may be higher than he can pay.  PRAISE FOR NADIA DALBUONO ‘[A] rock-solid read, with the click-clack of shoes on cobblestones and the oppressive heat of a Mediterranean summer making for a delectable spring treat.’ Readings Monthly ‘Gripping … You won't be able to put down this unsettling tale.’ The Sun

The second Leone Scamarcio thriller. As autumn sets in, the queues outside the soup kitchens of Rome are lengthening, and the people are taking to the piazzas, increasingly frustrated by the deepening economic crisis. Detective Leone Scamarcio is called to an apparent suicide on the Ponte Sant'Angelo, a stone’s throw from Vatican City. A man is hanging from the bridge, his expensive suit suggesting yet another businessman fallen on hard times. But Scamarcio is immediately troubled by similarities with the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, dubbed ‘God’s Banker’ because of his work for the Vatican Bank. Scamarcio’s instincts are soon proved correct when a cardinal with links to the bank is killed. And when US Intelligence warn Scamarcio to drop his investigation, he knows that the stakes are far higher than he first realised. Ignoring their threats, Scamarcio pushes on, but his progress is being monitored by some of the world’s most powerful men, who will stop at nothing to make sure their dirty work stays under cover. In breathtaking developments that link 9/11, America’s dirty wars, Vatican corruption, the Mafia, and Italy’s violence against its own people, Scamarcio has to deal with responsibilities far above his pay grade. PRAISE FOR NADIA DALBUONO ‘A rollercoaster ride … Unsettling but compelling.’ The Sun ‘[P]its the little guy against the global forces that shaped the late twentieth and early twenty first century behind the scenes … a taut, well constructed thriller.’ PS News

The investigation of an apparent hit-and-run unravels a tangled web in modern Rome. When the family of Micky Proietti, a top television executive, goes missing, Leone Scamarcio is called to investigate. Everyone, it seems — from Premier League footballers to jilted starlets and cabinet ministers — has an axe to grind with Proietti. What starts out as an investigation into his countless affairs soon becomes an inquiry into how Proietti does business and the people he has discarded along the way. Finally, Proietti’s finances attract Scamarcio’s attention, and he discovers that the drama commissioner has been granting favours to some very shadowy sponsors. Like a swimmer trying to escape a riptide, Scamarcio comes to realise that this new inquiry threatens to bring him head to head with his father’s old lieutenant, Piero Piocosta. If he’s to survive in the police force, Scamarcio knows that he must find a way to get Piocosta off his back, once and for all. And find it quickly. Reluctantly, he travels home to Calabria in an attempt to understand how powerful Piocosta has really become and whether he might ever be silenced. It’s a perilous journey, but one Scamarcio has to make if he’s to finally banish the ghosts of his past. PRAISE FOR NADIA DALBUONO ‘Dalbuono has an intimate knowledge and understanding of Italy, its criminal underbelly and the often twisted and corrupted state that functions on the back of its relationship with the Mafia … A fresh voice in a well-trodden field … This is Euro-noir of the highest order.’ New Books ‘A racy thriller.’ TLS

The fourth Leone Scamarcio thriller On a hot summer’s morning in Rome, three public places — a McDonald’s, a preschool, and a café — come under siege from a group of terrorists who appear to be Islamic extremists. When word comes through that the terrorists will only negotiate with Detective Leone Scamarcio, no one is more surprised than Scamarcio himself. The young man with frightened eyes who speaks to Scamarcio seems anything but in control. He says that Scamarcio is the only person he can trust to care about the truth. Then he gives Scamarcio an unusual list of demands, including that everything must be done without police or intelligence involvement, and within twenty-four hours — or the hostages die. With his face on every TV screen, and with all of Italy on alert, Scamarcio must race against the clock and elude the grasp of the increasingly unhinged chief of intelligence, Colonel Scalisi, to meet the terrorists’ demands, and to uncover the truth behind the attacks. But, as Scamarcio follows the young man’s clues, he finds that every question seems to turn up five more, and, as usual for this son-of-a-Mafioso policeman, nothing is as it seems.

When Leone Scamarcio investigates the murder of a boy with demonic possession, who will win: Scamarcio or the Devil? On a cold and wintry Roman afternoon, a troubled young man, Andrea Borghese, is found dead in his parents’ apartment. The last people to see him alive were five Roman Catholic priests who had left the Vatican to visit Andrea for a very particular purpose. They were performing an exorcism. Meanwhile, Detective Leone Scamarcio is unravelling. His partner, the beautiful ex-showgirl Fiammetta DiBondi, is expecting their first child, and the baby is due any day. But what kind of world is this in which to raise a child? When his boss, Chief Garramone, calls with the Borghesi case, insisting that Scamarcio is the only man he trusts with the job, Scamarcio accepts the mission as a welcome distraction. But the case proves far more tangled than Scamarcio had anticipated, and he finds himself in an ever-thickening plot of occult practices, murder, church corruption, government bribery, pharmaceutical dirty dealings, family secrets, and, of course, the mafia. To make things even more complicated, Scamarcio’s old flame, Aurelia, has returned to Rome, and Scamarcio is having trouble thinking straight. As he circles closer to the truth, the danger mounts, and when his new little family comes under threat, Leone Scamarcio has to decide once and for all what he really stands for.