Chicago restaurateur Elso Bari specializes in locating those who don't want to be found, but in the shadowy worlds of private security and organized crime, it can be hard to distinguish the hunters from the hunted Elso Bari runs a restaurant in Chicago, and a sideline in private investigation. A stylish connoisseur of fine wines and gourmet cuisine, he's also no stranger to the seedier side of city life. His debt to a powerful organization obliges him to investigate the suspicious death of one of its employees, a man with ties to international art trafficking. The trail leads Elso to Barcelona, where he becomes entangled in the hunt for a female contract killer who uses sex as a weapon-and is too smart to be tracked down by just anybody. Elso is comfortable moving in the shadows, but the deeper he delves into the criminal underworld, the harder it is to know whom he's working for and whom he's seeking, let alone why. Award-winning author David C. Hall navigates the murky waters of morality and transports the hard-boiled American thriller to the Mediterranean, giving a cosmopolitan twist to this action-packed tale of murder, sex, and betrayal.
"Narrative pace, mettle, and action-lots of action-in this excellent novel by David C. Hall."
Jesus Lens, Calibre .38
"A novel in which humor, irony, and narrative force are present in all the twists of the plot, in all the characters . . . characters that are immediately convincing."
Lorenzo Silva, author of the Bevilacqua series and winner of the 2012 Premio Planeta de No
"Like all literature on the frontier between two cultures, and within the marginal character of a genre, crime fiction, Hall's work moves in the twilight area of social violence, in the moral ambiguity of the characters, though not of the author, in a shadow line full of disillusionment, fear, and lack of meaning."
Lorenzo Silva, author of the Bevilacqua series and winner of the 2012 Premio Planeta de No
