Ninfa dormiente

A protagonist with a proud, indomitable personality, sometimes brusque, always compassionate. A highly atmospheric setting.
A very talented, international-level author.
200,000 copies sold

Chief Inspector Teresa Battaglia is fighting her private war against Alzheimer’s, which should force her to resign, when she gets involved in a peculiar, eerie investigation. It all begins with a painting being recovered. The last painting of an elderly painter who has lived isolated since the end of the Second World War, shut away in self-imposed silence. The riddle of the Sleeping Nymph – the title of the portrait – is concealed in its very creation: lab tests show that the ink used to paint it is blood from a human heart. As Inspector Massimo Marini, unaware of Teresa’s illness, struggles to regain his strength and mental clarity after a very painful personal event, the case of the Sleeping Nymph suddenly explodes when a new victim appears. A man, whose only body part found is his heart, torn out of his chest and exhibited as a kind of warning at the gates of a village in the Alps. The secrets of this isolated and in many ways mysterious valley are about to be revealed, and someone in the shadows will do anything to keep them concealed…