• 2 Seas Represents: Dutch Rights.
• Rights sold: TV rights (Palomar).
• Over 20,000 copies sold; 7th print run
• English translation available
• Shortlisted for the Scerbanenco Prize

FICTION | CRIME | SUSPENSE

“A masterpiece of noir alchemy. Giampaolo Simi’s killer girl between redemption and cold case”. — La Repubblica

The story of a killer girl and of her greatest accuser. The story of a doubt, of a deceit, of the chance of a new life.

Marina di Pietrasanta, Versilia, Tuscany. Nora Beckford just got out of jail after fourteen years of imprisonment for Irene Moroni’s murder. When Irene died, she was eighteen and Nora was twenty. Dario Corbo, then a young columnist who got passionate about the case, was her greatest accuser. He mercilessly dug into the lives of Irene, Nora and their friends, desperate for scandalous secrets to turn into common knowledge. Now, many years later, his newspaper has sacked him: he is broke and he has to support his wife and son.

Since she got out of jail, Nora Beckford suffers from an insuperable depression that her recovered freedom cannot remotely soothe. Nora has always declared herself innocent – proving her non-involvement in the murder seems the only way to get really free. An important publisher is willing to invest in a memoir-interview involving the killer and her accuser. Dario rejects the offer at first, but there is a lot of money at stake and it is probably his last chance to save himself. Virtually obliged, Corbo accepts the task but he promises himself never to subscribe a killer’s rehabilitation. That’s how Dario Corbo is forced to reopen a case that was closed decades before, reconstructing his own enquiry with Nora, the person who – he is sure – is responsible for having killed innocent.

La ragazza sbagliata is a disquieting cold case with a relentless rhythm and a brilliant cinematographic style. It leads us to the origins of evil and it forces us to tackle our most secret drives. A merciless novel about journalism and its crisis that leaves the reader with a deep question: does one only truth exist?