Under the long shadow of Andrea CamilleriAuthors like Mirko Zihaly are sowing their new dark stories where everything acquires a fascinating balance, the thriller, a gore, the deductive. The crime novel, already consolidated for many years and with various sources around the world, is mixed in a melting pot that, in this case ends up being reflected in the spaghetti crime where Zihaly, Dazieri or one of their latest phenomena D'Andrea, they have discovered a true vein based on good plots of overflowing tension in all aspects, in the own rhythm of the story, in the enigmas, in the deaths and in the scenery.
In this case of The Shape of Darkness, Mirko Zilahy challenges the reader, places him in the darkest Rome of his imagination so that he wanders between the grandeur of his past and the dark recesses of present evil. At times he distracts us until he presents us with the harshness of his cases at the exact point where we need to know more once we think we have all the necessary clues.
The ancient city is plunged into the caprice of darkness of a ruthless murderer. The cradle of Western civilization, from where we obtained a large part of our languages, from where the first engineering was imported, where the arts reached their most sublimated value, where the first great myths that tried to explain human existence were born ...
And it is precisely these myths that the murderer feeds on. In each of his murders he evokes the old symbols of mythological characters. The bodies of his victims compose works of evil art.
The sculptor, so called according to the media, becomes the nightmare of Commissioner Mancini. His works are reproduced in different areas of the city and he, the great researcher, is often overwhelmed. To the point of making mistakes that can be fatal.
A novel that also connects with other recent ones with that aspect of murder as a theatrical representation. It seems as if the new killers of the genre came out of the school of Fine Arts. These other recent cases are Splinters in the bloodby Ashley Dyher or Ragdoll (Ragdoll)by Daniel Cole.
You can now buy the novel The shape of darkness, the new book by Mirko Zilahy, after his surprising previous work: This is how you kill yourself, here: