Dell
September 2005
On Sale: September 6, 2005
Featuring: Nic Costa; Teresa Lupo
480 pages ISBN: 0440242371 EAN: 9780440242376 Paperback (reprint) Add to Wish List
In Romeโs crowded Campo dei Fiori, a woman rushes up to two carabinieri lounging in their sunglasses and uniforms, insisting that her sixteen-year-old daughter has just been abducted. Detective Nic Costa sees the scene unfold and intervenes. Because Costa knows what the two officers donโt: that in the morgue at Romeโs police headquarters, a forensic pathologist is examining the strange, mummified corpse of another girl, whose disappearance and death bear haunting similaritiesโฆ.
Police pathologist Teresa Lupo is Nicโs colleague, friend, and his only equal when it comes to breaking the rules to get results, whatever the cost. Now, after years of living with the dead, Teresa insists that her superiors move quickly to save a life. Poring over the body of the girl in the morgue, she has found too many similarities between the girls, including a unique, leering tattoo. Lupo is sure that the vanished girl is headed for a bizarre ancient Bacchanalia involving virgins and sacrificial murderโa ritual that is only days away.
As Nic and Teresa claw at the case from two sidesโand as Nic finds himself at once puzzled and beguiled by the missing girlโs seductive motherโa chilling picture is beginning to emergeโฆof secret relationships and sexual depravity, organized crime and unimaginable corruption. With the clock ticking down on a young girlโs life, Nic and Teresa are about to make the most horrifying discovery of allโin a pit of human darkness, where an age-old malevolence still endures, evil has consumed innocenceโฆand a very modern vengeance has begun.
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