Publisher's Weekly Review
Chapter one of Dazieri's disappointing sequel to 2017's well-received Kill the Father opens with an arresting sentence: "Death arrived in Rome at ten minutes to midnight aboard a high-speed train from Milan." Colomba Caselli, deputy chief of the city's homicide squad, is called to Termini Station after a grim discovery-all the passengers in the train's first-class car are dead, victims of a bioweapon. Colomba joins a massive manhunt for the men claiming responsibility in the name of ISIS. Her skepticism that ISIS is behind the attack is bolstered by insights from private consultant Dante Torre. The reader, however, is ahead of the leads, due to a grim prologue featuring prisoners confined to a concrete cube, including a 13-year-old referred to as "the Girl," who survives torture only to get the upper hand on their captors. Genre veterans will be wondering when this teaser will bear fruit, and when it does, the payoff isn't particularly interesting. Hopefully, Dazieri will return to form next time. Agent: Laura Grandi, Grandi e Associati (Italy). (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
More murder, mayhem, and madness, Italian-style.Dazieri's Kill the Father (2017) introduced two psychically wounded characters, Dante Torre and Colomba Caselli, who wrestle with various demons while solving extremely nasty crimes. In this follow-up, the opening gambit is a very nasty crime indeed, with a whole train car full of victimsand that car is the first-class compartment of the Milan-to-Rome express, exciting visions of the class struggle. Of one victim, Dazieri writes by way of warming up to the subject, "the officer decided that this was the deadest dead person he'd ever laid eyes on." Leave it to a book with a lead named Dante to impose degrees of deadness, but whatever the case, suspicion immediately falls on the usual suspectsthe Muslims, that is. A few raids on mosques and one exploding head later, Dante divines that maybe the Islamic State group isn't to blame after all; for her part, the already well-traumatized Colomba is put on leave, giving her and Dante the freedom of the highway. What they discover while trundling back and forth to Germany, Austria, and elsewhere is that the real killer is Giltine, an avenging angel of sorts, a woman engineered to a fine point of psychosis, with the fingerprints of Stasi and KGB all over the scene. "She scares me, CC," says Dante. He's almost as dead inside as Giltine, whose name is that of the goddess of death in ancient Lithuanian mythology, but Giltine has a special knack for recruiting people from bad novelists to Norman Bates wannabes to do her dirty work for her, a whole army of darkness. Can Dante and Colomba save the NATO powers from a woman who likes nothing better than to stick syringes full of mescaline and psylocibin into her victims' eyes? That question is answered with the most carefully crafted of cliffhangers, one that leaves the door wide open for more blood-spilling adventures to come.A harrowing if entertaining ride. Fans of Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter series will, beg pardon, eat this up. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Mass murder on a train from Milan to Rome kicks off an international quest for the elusive Angel of Death in this explosive follow-up to Kill the Father (2017). Rome Deputy Police Commissioner Colomba Caselli puts herself at risk when she discovers that all the first-class passengers on the train are dead, victims of a deadly gas. ISIS claims responsibility for the deaths in an amateurish video featuring two presumed perpetrators, and Caselli asks for help in identifying them from Dante Torre, a master at reading human behavior. After an ensuing shoot-out, Caselli, who's known to stray from accepted police procedures, is placed on administrative suspension. But by then, she and Torre both damaged by traumas in their pasts, leaving her with panic attacks and him with severe claustrophobia have gone too far to give up their quest for the woman they believe responsible for multiple murders in various countries. This is compelling crime fiction but not for the faint of heart or stomach, given the abundance of gruesome scenes (sequestering a deadly scorpion in the mouth of a child), but Dazieri mixes fact with conjecture to unrelentingly suspenseful effect, and he once again exits with a cliff-hanger. With complex and fallible characters and nonstop action, this is prime international crime fiction and a great fit for followers of David Hewson's Rome-set Nic Costa series.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
There's one place worse than prison-the Box, a concrete cube without windows. No one comes out alive, no one that is until the Girl, the silent one covered in blood. And then-who knows how much later or why?-a train from Milan arrives in Rome with a carriage full of dead passengers. ISIS claims responsibility, or so someone wants the police to think. Believing otherwise are Deputy Chief Colomba Caselli and her friend Dante Torre, kidnapped as a child and held for 13 years in a concrete silo (see Kill the Father, the first novel in the Caselli-Torre series), a man with a brilliant mind but always on the verge of a psychotic breakdown. Clues point to a vicious assassin suffering from Cotard delusion (in which the sufferer thinks he is already dead), an angel of death who kills in bulk to hide the intended victim. Verdict Dazieri, author of numerous novels and screenplays, knows how to entertain, though sometimes the comic book effects, a bit Grand Guignol, occasion laughter. Damaged characters struggle amid blood, guts, and vomit to discover the truth behind horrific events dating back to the Cold War and Pavlovian experimentation. Will appeal to fans of Jo Nesbo and Italian noir.-Ron Terpening, formerly with Univ. of Arizona, Tucson © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.