"A superior police procedural" Mark Sanderson, The Times Crime Club

"Northern Italy's answer to Inspector Montalbano" Alessandro Baricco

September 2008. Commissario Arcadipane arrives at the scene of a macabre discovery: the bones of twelve men and women buried in the countryside near Torino.

By the next morning, a task force specialising in mass graves from WWII is already in place. But something doesn't feel right: one of the femurs shows signs of an operation that couldn't have taken place before the seventies.

Suspecting a cover-up, Arcadipane launches his own investigation, enlisting his old mentor, Corso Bramard, long retired, and Isa, a young officer still haunted by the unexplained death of her father.

These mismatched allies ­- one at last at peace, one jaded to the point of breakdown and one under a permanent disciplinary cloud ­- will unveil a cruel political conspiracy that someone wants covered up for the second time.

Translated from the Italian by Silvester Mazzarella