Three, Imperfect Number

The report that has just landed on Commissario Martusciello’s desk is unlike any other. The lifeless body of the Neapolitan singer Jerry Vialdi, a.k.a. Gennaro Mangiavento, has been found at the Naples football stadium; another corpse, this time a Jane Doe, has been discovered in the Bentegodi Stadium in Verona, hundreds of miles away. Both bodies were left in a fetal position with no signs of physical violence, the method and the madness behind them appear to hide some unutterable secret. Conclusion: a daring challenge left by a psychopath for the police, who have no idea where to begin. Except for superintendent Blanca Occhiuzzi: beautiful, blind from birth, forced by the dark that envelops her to perceive the world through only four senses, she feels the fear in people; she feels their guilt and their innocence. It is she who takes Martusciello by the hand, guiding him into the mind of a murderer with her very female, very sensual intuition. It is as if he were the blind one. Allusive, mysterious, rife with double-meanings, saturated with an exotic, almost esoteric musicality, Patrizia Rinaldi has found a radically new way of writing to tell the story of a thrilling new kind of heroine.