The Condemnation of the Living

Original title: La condanna dei viventi

Publication Date:

May 2022

Pages:

576

Original language and publisher

Italian | Longanesi

Territories Handled

Netherlands, Scandinavia, World English

Territories Sold

Spanish (World) (Grijalbo (preempt))
Netherlands (Xander (preempt))
Poland (Sonia Draga (preempt))
Greece (Patakis (preempt))
France (Albin Michel (preempt))
Lithuania (Alma Littera (preempt))
Romania (Litera (preempt))
Germany (Ullstein (preempt))
Film/TV rights ()

Genre

Crime & Thrillers

The Condemnation of the Living

Original title: La condanna dei viventi

Synopsis

“The book is a magnet that is difficult to detach. A game with a pressing that never ends. Tension and curiosity play on par. They are those astral conjunctions that you can’t wait to see how it ends. And it’s usually not what you thought. It’s the beauty of thrillers when they’re really good. “— Carlo Baroni, Corriere della Sera

“I haven’t read such a powerful novel in years. It’s a masterpiece.” — Gian Paolo Serino

“A textbook thriller, the classic page turner that glues you to an armchair.” — Maria Grazia Ligato, Io Donna

“In this thriller – rights already sold in eight countries – the more than five hundred pages scroll quickly because each new discovery makes the picture more shocking.” — Giuliano Aluffi, Il Venerdì – la Repubblica

He has a plan. He has a vision. He has a design in mind. And no one can stop him. 

This is not a routine investigation. This is a case unlike any other. This is the darkness in which you will reflect yourself, and nothing will be as before.

The child found in the night is hiding something. Fosco claims that he was kidnapped but managed to escape, running through the Tuscan countryside. Nobody believes him, or maybe no one has really tried to listen to him. I did. And I know that inside his story lies something terrible. Something bigger than him and perhaps even bigger than me. But what can it be? It is only when another child disappears that I begin to see a window of opportunity to carry out my investigation.

Fosco and Andrea live far away from one another, they don’t know each other, they have nothing in common. Except their appearance: they’re identical, they could be twins. Andrea, however, does not reappear: it’s up to me to find him, to find the person who killed his father and took him away from his mother. It’s up to me to save his life. But I can’t do it alone.

The only one who believes in me is Fabio Costa, an outcast policeman with a dark past, exiled in a small provincial police station. While the number of victims increases and enigmas become more and more indecipherable, I understand that the author of these crimes responds to a superior plan. His obsession is morbid, cruel, unstoppable: to transform his visionary follies into violent realities, in delirious works of art.

My name is Valentina Medici, I am the youngest commissioner of the Service, and this is my first real investigation. And it may also be the last of my life. Because no one can fall into a pit so black, so deep, and hope to emerge from it unscathed.

Marketing Information

  • A novel with an implacable rhythm, one twist after another, page after page until the unpredictable ending.
  • The author, Marco De Franchi, is a Chief Commissioner of Police and has worked for a long time for the Central Operational Service. The extraordinary creativity of the narrative plot is combined with a great competence in the description of actual investigative procedures.
  • English translation available (made by made by neural machine translation service DeepL)
  • Initial print run: 27,000 copies
  • Official book launch video
  • Started at #28 on the General Amazon Chart!