The great tradition of Italian comedy meets the dark side of Rimini, in a hilarious yet gripping crime story.

A homeless man, a black man, a stripper: a chain of crimes that seems sinisterly logic. It looks like the killer that in just a few hours dispersed three corpses throughout the city of Rimini, has some kind of “cleanse” in mind. But the deputy commissioner Costanza Confalonieri Bonnet, the most beautiful investigator that has ever set foot in Police Headquarters (calendars included) is not convinced: according to her the ideological trail is not the right one. Otherwise why would Vagano – the mysterious tramp that looked like a character out of a Fellini film – bother to swallow a key before he died? That, of course, is the key to everything. What does it open? Flanked by her team of loyal colleagues – the Latinist inspector Orlando Appicciafuoco, the much less intellectual deputy superintendent Emerson Leichen Palmer Balducci and the nerdy chosen agent Cecilia Cortellesi, – Costanza investigates, in the magical and disturbing landscape of the Romagna Riviera in winter time. As if the manhunt wasn’t enough, she has to skilfully manoeuvre between a mayor in love, a curious coroner and the imminent visit of her singular Milanese family…

The first narrative challenge of Gino Vignali is a novel that combines tension and comedy, twists and atmosphere. It’s a book in the great tradition of Italian humour, with serious social and media satire in the background, endowed with a unique style that possesses grace and craftsmanship together with all the freshness of an improvisation. Vignali knows how to entertain the reader in an inexhaustible play of language: from surgical jokes to pyrotechnical dialogues. A smart dark comedy, which marks the debut of a seductive group of characters destined for many adventures. After the winter, spring is coming.