Tobias Jones's lacerating non-fiction exposé The Dark Heart of Italy set out his stall as anatomist of Berlusconi's compromised nation. But does Jones have the novelistic smarts to parley his knowledge into a detective series? His strategy is to drop a very Chandlerian private eye into an unnamed Italian town (readers may pick up on references to the local ham), and weave a labyrinthine plot for the detective, Castagnetti, to tackle.

There's a secondary debt to another, less heralded giant of the American private eye novel, Ross Macdonald. Castagnetti is hired by a lawyer working for a dead widow's estate to establish if her missing son is alive in order to settle her legacy (those who know Macdonald's The Galton Case may spot a certain homage).