One morning in April, at the Playa, the only sandy beach in Catania, the body of one Thomas Ruscica is found. Someone has bashed his head in with a rake. Thomas was one of the so-called carusi, the youngsters from the ‘flock’ of don Rosario Limoli, the parish priest who works in a rough part of Catania, San Cristoforo. Vanina Guarrasi knew him: a kid from a problematic family who’d done wrong but was ready to redeem himself and help others like him. Was it the hand of the mob of a crime of passion? That is the question.

An ophthalmologist, Cristina Cassar Scalia lives and works in Catania. Her early novels are La seconda estate (2014, translated into French and winner of the International Capalbio Award for a debut novel) and Le stanze dello scirocco (2015). Her novel Sabbia nera (2018, winner of the Leonardo Sciascia-Racalmare Literary Award) introduces the deputy police chief Vanina Guarrasi, a character that won over readers and critics alike and would reappear in her novels La logica della lampara (2019) La salita dei Saponari (2020), L’uomo del porto (2021), Il talento del cappellano (2021), La carrozza della Santa (2022), and Il Re del gelato (2023).   With Carlo De Cataldo and Maurizio de Giovanni, she co-wrote Tre passi per un delitto (2020).