Nic Costa thriller
3 total works
When a young woman turns up dead in a peat bog, Teresa Lupo, a maverick pathologist, thinks she's got the victim of an ancient pagan ritual on her hands. She's wrong. Leo Falcone knows this case is recent history and the horror is still very much alive.
So begins an investigation that will take the police deep into the dark underworld of modern-day Rome's most disturbing and sinister secrets.
Nic Costa is trying to stay off the drink. Gianni Peroni used to work vice until he was caught in one of his own department's stings. Emilio Neri, the local Mafia boss, can't trust his own son and Vergil Wallis, the former American mobster, is refusing to talk. Meanwhile, someone is trying very hard to kill the pathologist. And now another beautiful young woman has gone missing ...
Stefano's left arm, the one holding the weapon, swept the table, swept everything on it . . . She was quiet, waiting, which was, his eyes seemed to say, what he wanted. Then Stefano lifted up the bag to the height of the desk, turned it upside down, let the contents fall on the table and said, 'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.'
Whilst Sara Farnese pours over ancient texts in the silent Vatican reading room, a brutal murder is taking place in a nearby church. Then suddenly a crazed man enters the Vatican carrying a bloodied bag. He walks up to Sara's desk. He has something he would like her to see . . .
Soon Sara is inextricably linked to a series of horrific and cunning murders, each one representative of the death of a martyr of the Church. Into this climate enter Detectives Costa and Rossi, enlisted to track down the killer, and to protect Sara from the horrors he is capable of. It seems that at any time she could be the next chosen sacrifice . . .
Detective Nic Costa finds himself a stranger in a strange land when he's sent to infiltrate the mob in a remote part of southern Italy.
Roman police detective Nic Costa has been sent undercover to Italy's beautiful, remote Calabrian coast to bring in the head of the feared mob, the 'Ndrangheta, who has offered to turn state witness for reasons of his own.
Hoping to reel in the biggest prize the state police have seen in years, the infamous Butcher of Palermo, Costa and his team are aware the stakes are high. But the constant deception is taking its toll. Out of their depth in a lawless part of Italy where they are the outcasts, not the men in the hills, with their shotguns and rough justice, the detectives find themselves pitched as much against one another as the mob. As the tension rises, it's clear the operation is not going to plan. Is Nic Costa getting too close to the enemy for comfort - and is there a traitor among them .?