Sotto mentite spoglie
Rocco Schiavone, increasingly brooding and melancholy, is forced to investigate under the glow of Christmas lights. A bank robbery and a body found in a small mountain lake—amid disguises, chemical formulas, twists and turns, and unexpected connections—put the deputy police chief of Aosta to the test. He will get to the bottom of it, though with a few more quick—and not entirely regular—moves than usual. Aosta is in a frenzy of Christmas preparations. Jingles on every street corner, shady types hiding beneath Santa beards, the usual sugary overload that Rocco would list among life’s greatest nuisances—if not at the very top. And on top of everything, it’s bitterly cold. He still has no idea what awaits him. The regret of a possible love—of a story that might have been and is now just another entry on the long list of remorse—weighs heavily on him, while the emptiness left by the ghost of Marina, who no longer appears to him, becomes harder and harder to bear. Into this melancholy that feeds his gloom comes the case of a bank robbery. A seemingly meagre haul and a carousel of hostages that turns out to be a ruse—one robbery inside another. Complicated business, though apparently separate from the discovery of a corpse in a mountain lake. Who is this man? At first, he is suspected to be an important missing chemist. What follows, instead, is a far more intricate affair. Big Pharma, sports, business, organized crime—an unexpected web of paths and connections that the unwilling Rocco is forced to navigate. Helping him in this new investigation—one that requires a few more nimble, irregular moves—are his old friends Brizio and Furio; and playing a larger role than usual are the brains of the police force: Michela Gambino, head of forensics, and the pathologist Alberto Fumagalli. This time, they must break through well-sealed doors, decipher hidden formulas, and uncover concealed identities.