Winner of the Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award this chilling police procedural is a masterpiece of psychological suspense. Italian Police Commissioner Aurelio Zen is dispatched to investigate the kidnapping of Ruggiero Miletti a powerful Perugian industrialist. But nobody much wants Zen to succeed: not the local authorities who view him as an interloper and certainly not Miletti s children who seem content to let the head of the family languish in the hands of his abductors--if he s still alive. Was Miletti truly the victim of professionals? Or might his kidnapper be someone closer to home: his preening son Daniele with his million-lire wardrobe and his profitable drug business? His daughter Cinzia whose vapid beauty conceals a devastating secret? The perverse Silvio or the eldest son Pietro the unscrupulous fixer who manipulates the plots of others for his own ends? As Zen tries to unravel this rat s nest of family intrigue and official complicity Michael Dibdin gives us one of his most accomplished thrillers.