The Italian thriller sheds its skin every twenty years: in 1980 with Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose”, in 2002 with Giorgio Faletti’s “I Kill”, and finally in 2022 with Jacopo De Michelis’ “The Station” – Antonio D’Orrico, Corriere della Sera

Jacopo De Michelis, the greatest Italian crime writer at the moment, wrote a hooking and compact thriller with hundreds of twists and many levels of stories held together with impressive skill. — Antonio D’Orrico, Sette

La Stazione is a monumental thriller that combines multiple stories without ever losing a single thread. It’s fair to say that De Michelis reinvents Italian crime fiction, as Antonio D’Orrico wrote in Sette. — Fabrizio Esposito, Il Fatto Quotidiano

A captivating novel that absorbs the reader layer by layer, page by page, unveiling the multiple colors of hell. An amazingly structured story, flowing smoothly without one superfluous word. With ‘The Station’, Jacopo De Michelis rewrites the canons of the genre for those who will follow. — Maurizio De Giovanni

Jacopo De Michelis guides us on a very original adventure where gothic, thriller and poetry are mixed in a narrative cocktail of rare power. — Giancarlo De Cataldo

Lucid and relentless. A pure narrative adrenaline. — Matteo Strukul

“A dense prose that transcends the boundaries of ‘genre’, and makes “The Station” the ultimate thriller.” – Enzo Verrengia, La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno

““The Station” has the impact of a real blockbuster, with continuous twists and turns and growing tension. Unmissable for those who have appreciated the symbolic and underground atmospheres of “L’ultimo Catone” by Matilde Asensi, the mystical and historical intertwining of “Foucault’s Pendulum” by Umberto Eco, and also Fred Vargas’ novels starring Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg” – Michela Fregona, Cultweek

“Read “The Station”, a novel made up of many novels held together with skill and mastery” – Beppe Cottafavi, Domani

“Captivating novel by Jacopo De Michelis that skillfully mixes adventure, thriller, noir, stories of the past and the present.” – Manuela Sasso, Diva e Donna

“Each page made me crave for the next one, and the one after, right till the last sentence. I hadn’t read such an engrossing book in a long time, perhaps since David Roberts’ “Shantaram”” – Eva Kristin Urestad-Pedersen, Internazionale

After Umberto Eco’s “Il nome della rosa” – “The Name of the Rose” (Bompiani) and Giorgio Faletti’s “Io uccido” – “I Kill” (Baldini&Castoldi), Jacopo De Michelis with “La stazione” – “The Station” (Italy: Giunti) breaks the ground and revolutionizes the Italian thriller. — Antonio D’Orrico

An original, effective, and incredibly cinematic thriller set within the mysterious undergrounds of a Milan station, where hidden secrets from the past emerge to heal the wounds of the present.

After being kicked out of the police force for exposing the corruption within the police’s high ranks, 28-year-old inspector Riccardo Mezzanotte has just joined the Railway Police of Milan’s main train station, the monumental Central Station, a place as majestic as it is degraded, a “moving cathedral” that, with its human flotsam and jetsam living at the margins of society, stands against the ideal image the city wants to give of itself. Reluctant to follow the rules and haunted by the unsolved murder of his father, Riccardo struggles to find his own place in his new role. However, amidst everyone’s indifference, he starts to investigate the deaths of a series of animals found horribly mutilated that seem to be linked to the strange man the Station’s junkies and tramps call the “Phantom.”

As the investigation proceeds, Riccardo is dragged into the shadowy underworld of the Station, inhabited by a varied, deprived, and yet touching humanity: prostitutes, drunks, addicts, refugees, and vagabonds, fierce and lonely creatures who for years have been marginalized by the civilized world above. There, he will come across the story of Platform 21, from which Jews were carted off to Nazi concentration camps during World War II, thanks to Laura Cordero, a beautiful and wealthy twenty-year-old girl with a particular ability to empathize with other human beings.

Laura’s and Riccardo’s paths are destined to cross among the Station’s labyrinthine undergrounds, where many long-held secrets are hidden and hang over the solution to a shocking crime.

Complex, tense, and twisty but also subtle, human, and deeply affecting, La stazione is a truly chilling debut with a flawed and nuanced protagonist who is easy to root for, a richly detailed sense of place, and a captivating and skillfully crafted plot that keeps readers guessing until the very end.