Adam Colclough lives and works in the West Midlands, he writes regularly for a number of websites, one day he will get round to writing a book for someone else to review.
A high-speed train is hit by what looks like a terrorist attack as it enters Rome's main station. Every passenger in the first-class carriage has been gassed and within hours a video has been posted claiming responsibility.
To the authorities it looks like case of extremism, eccentric terrorism expert Dante Torre isn't convinced. His instinctive understanding of evil suggests something even darker at work. Working with Deputy Commissioner Columba Caselli he sets off across Europe in search of a killer of almost superhuman cruelty.
This book plays on some deeply troubling ideas, including the dark legacy of the Cold War, the outer fringes of psychiatric illness and the knee jerk reaction the authorities take to terrorism. Dazieri wraps these in a thriller that frequently gives his readers cause to feel unsettled by the realization of our cultural obsession with murder as much as the actions of the titular Angel.
Caselli and Torre make for a fascinating pair of investigators, frequently at odds yet drawn together by the solidarity of outsiders. The settings in Rome and elsewhere are brilliantly realised and decidedly dark, this is the ‘eternal city’ very much as the tourist brochures don’t want you to see it.
This is a gripping instalment in a series that takes readers into some of the murkier reaches of our troubled world.
