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Book Summary and Reviews of The Bottom of Your Heart by Maurizio de Giovanni

The Bottom of Your Heart by Maurizio de Giovanni

The Bottom of Your Heart

Inferno for Commissario Ricciardi

by Maurizio de Giovanni

  • Critics' Consensus (2):
  • Published:
  • Nov 2015, 408 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

In this new installment in the Commissario Ricciardi series, Maurizio de Giovanni creates a large cast of unforgettable characters and a compelling, suspenseful plot that demonstrates once more why he is considered one of the best crime writers working today.

In the middle of a summer heat wave, as Naples prepares for one of its most important holy days, a renowned surgeon falls to his death from the window of his office. For Commissario Ricciardi and Brigadier Maione it is the beginning of an investigation that will bring them into contact with the most torrid, conflicting and enduring of human passions. In the world Ricciardi and Maione are about to enter, infidelity appears inextricable from the most joyful expressions of love, and, this interdependence sows doubt and uncertainty in both men, compromising their own attempts at love.

Ricciardi is one of the most intriguing and unique figures to appear in crime fiction in recent years. He possesses the dubious gift of being able to see and hear the last seconds in the lives of those who have suffered a violent death. This ability makes him an unusually effective investigator but plagues him and renders human relationships almost impossible. He is a classic noir hero and the cursed son of a city that, for all its Mediterranean splendor, is a perfect noir city.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. A searing look at the tortured soul of the lead makes this entry especially memorable." - Publishers Weekly

"De Giovanni (The Crocodile, 2013, etc.) takes so much time to evoke Ricciardi's Naples that you'd think he was laying the foundation ofthe world. But it all pays off in a richly textured story whose murder is nothing more than the point of entry." - Kirkus

This information about The Bottom of Your Heart was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Maurizio de Giovanni

Maurizio de Giovanni lives and works in Naples. He is the author of five previous books in the Commissario Ricciardi series, I Will Have Vengeance, Blood Curse, Everyone in their Place, Day of the Dead, By My Hand, Viper, and the contemporary Neapolitan thriller, The Crocodile.

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