'The role of Guido Guerrieri is to take on impossible cases that have little chance of success. The lawyer accepts the case only because he's fallen in lust with the prisoner's wife; his efforts to prove his client's innocence bring him into dangerous conflict with Mafia interests. Everything a legal thriller should be.'?The Times

Counsel for the defense Guido Guerrieri is asked to handle the appeal of Fabio Paolicelli, who has been sentenced to sixteen years for drug smuggling. The odds are stacked against the accused: not only the fact that he initially confessed to the crime but also his past as a neo-Fascist thug. It is only the intervention of Paolicelli's beautiful half-Japanese wife that finally overcomes Guerrieri's reluctance. Matters are further complicated when Guerrieri ends up in bed with her.

This book is hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal parts. Where Philip Marlowe would be knocking back bourbon and listening to the snap of fist on jaw, Guerrieri prefers Sicilian wine and Leonard Cohen. The local color is complemented by snappy legal procedural writing which sends the reader tumbling through the clockwork of a tightly wound plot.

Gianrico Carofiglio, a member of the Senate in Italy, was an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia. He has been involved with trials concerning corruption, organized crime, and human trafficking. He has written four Guido Guerrieri novels, all bestsellers, having sold over a million copies worldwide.

'Carofiglio writes crisp, ironical novels that are as much love stories and philosophical treatises as they are legal thrillers.'—The New Yorker

'Part legal thriller, part insight into a man fighting his own demons. Every character in Carofiglio's fiction has a story to tell and they are always worth hearing. As the author himself is an anti-mafia prosecutor, this powerfully affecting novel benefits from veracity as well as tight writing.'—Daily Mail

'A novel as much about human nature and the passage of time as it is about law-breaking. Crisp laconic sentences, subtle shifts in tone, and a seamless translation that should be commended.'—The Times Literary Supplement

When Martina accuses her ex-boyfriend, the son of a powerful local judge, of assault and battery, no witnesses can be persuaded to testify on her behalf, and one lawyer after another refuses to represent her. Guido Guerrieri knows the case could bring his legal career to a premature, messy end, but he cannot resist the appeal of an apparently hopeless cause. Nor can he deny an attraction to Sister Claudia, the young woman in charge of the shelter where Martina is living. Claudia shares his love of martial arts and his virulent hatred of injustice.

Gianrico Carofiglio was an anti-Mafia prosecutor in Bari, a port on the coast of Puglia, for many years, and is now a member of the Italian senate. He has sold over 2.5 million books of the Guerrieri series in Italy alone.