Denied Crimes

In Rome, in the middle of a cold winter in the Eighties, preparations for Christmas are in full swing. Near the Vatican City, in a workshop of sacred objects and clothes, old Rinaldo's day begins, as always, among the tourists crowding the streets and the smell of freshly baked pizza. At the same time, Commissioner Rosco says goodbye to the agents of his team, before the imminent transfer to the Rieti police station: the punishment for a mistake made during his last case. A forced confinement that will become the opportunity to show off his intuition and investigate a crime committed thirty years earlier. The two apparently unrelated situations will intertwine in a crescendo of incredible events, after the strange death of old Rinaldo, while a creepy voice follows the entire unfolding of the narration. With her original and clear style, here imbued with faith and sacredness, Daniela Alibrandi offers the reader a multidimensional thriller full of twists, centered on the eternal struggle between Good and Evil.

my review... 

Definitely a different read for me. I do often enjoy the personality of the fallen cop with the desire to still prove his point and solve his or her case. In this instance, that is exactly what Commissioner Rosco was faced with and exactly what he intended to do.

While there might be the feel of Italian culture here because of the setting and the author being Italian, there is not problem whatsoever with the flow of the reading. In fact, it doesn’t even seem as if the author is writing in what is a second language. There is even a bit of humor of the old down-trodden detective stories. To me, this is more of a good old, crime fiction mystery than a thriller. Quite easy to read. 

read an excerpt... 

As he stepped outside into the cold night air, far from the acrid laboratory fumes, Rosco felt the full weight of his solitude. At that moment, he would have given anything to trade places with his friend—stuck at work but longing to rush home, where his children would demand to play with him, ignoring his exhaustion. A house filled with toys, a Christmas tree with flickering lights—some of them probably burnt out—his wife gently scolding him for not finding time to buy new ones, only to embrace him and whisper in his ear so the kids wouldn’t hear.

The scent of baked pasta filling the home, the warmth of love, and the sweetness of the holidays spent wrapped in the cocoon of family, nourishing and protecting those cherished bonds—like a womb.

Everything he had been unable to build. He wondered again whether his ex-wife had given birth, making her new partner a father. Finally, he felt the desire to detach himself from the past, as if the birth of that child had inevitably put an end to his endless dwelling on those 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Daniela Alibrandi is the author of successful thrillers and noirs in Italy and abroad. She was born in Rome, and lived and studied in the United States. In her professional life, she has been involved in cultural exchanges within the Council of Europe and the European Union. With her seventeen published novels, six English editions and many short stories she is a prominent figure in the Italian literary scene. Her writings have often been featured in national newspapers and literary columns on RAI Italian television and radio broadcasts. The author, always present with her novels in the most important national bookfairs, has also won several national literary awards and the 2022 Women Art Week Award for her literary career. Some of her Italian editions are present in Harvard and Yale libraries as well as in New York Public Library.

This author’s style has been defined was often defined multidimensional, until it was officialized as MultiDimensionCrime (Acronym MDCrime). A reading experience that forges imagination in a multi-dimensional way. In the complex and intertwined plots of her novels, which lead to sudden and unexpected twists, the characteristics of different strands are harmoniously blended. The reader follows the investigation to solve a murder and at the same time he amazingly enters the mind of the killer, reasoning alongside him, preparing the crime with him, and even partaking in the victims’ despair and terror. All in a growing suspense, both during the narration and in the final pages, when the reader often has to question all the beliefs he has developed during the reading.

On last May 5th, Daniela Alibrandi published her English edition of the book “Denied Crimes”. Set in Rome during the 1980s, it takes the reader to discover the most mysterious and iconic places of the Eternal City, even leading him to the underground of the Vatican City. The book is the second of the MDCrime series Rome’s Multi-Dimensional Crimes, set in Rome’s undergrounds between the late Seventies and the Eighties, whose plots are not connected and can be read independently, all standalone.

 

English website: https://danielaenglishwebsite.wordpress.com/

Italian website: https://danielaalibrandi.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/danielaalibrand

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielaalibrandi/

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Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/DENIED-CRIMES-ROMES-MULTIDIMENSIONAL-ebook/dp/B0F6KKGP8N/ref=sr_1_1