Having now reached the sixteenth stage of a literary adventure that began in 1998 with the novel “Ultime notizie di una fuga”, Commissioner Soneri is now an old companion for lovers of the noir genre . Every now and then we lose sight of him, perhaps shrouded in the fog of Parma where he lives and conducts his investigations. Then he reappears in the bookstores, thanks to the fertile pen of Valerio Varesi , with his inseparable cigar to keep him company in his investigations and his passion for good Emilian cuisine, based on culatello and anolini brodo and tortelli d'erbetta. This is the fuel that sets in motion the neurons of an investigator who often finds himself having to deal with elusive cases, animated by ambiguous characters, with profiles that are difficult to perceive, like the Parma landscape on foggy days or in autumn twilights.

In his new investigation, “ Vuoti di memoria” (Mondadori, 2024, pp. 238, also e-book). Soneri has to deal with a story that is more than a puzzle. Page after page, in fact, it becomes a labyrinth for the investigators from which it seems increasingly complicated to extricate themselves. And yet, at the beginning everything seemed clear, almost crystalline: Romeo Calandri, an undertaker, was killed - or rather, executed, considering the brutality of the murder. Following a rapid investigation, Carmelo Musci, a professional killer in the pay of the 'ndrangheta, ended up behind bars, also indicted for the probable murder of Luciano Orsi, Calandri's partner who disappeared on the same day of the execution. And instead, by a curious, grotesque and vaguely macabre coincidence, just as a mass is being celebrated in suffrage for his presumed death, Orsi reappears after months on a boat off the coast of Cesenatico . Where has he been all this time? Why is he on that boat? Has he escaped a murder, or is he implicated in that of his partner?