June 1970. Former Inspector Franco Bordelli has been retired for a while now. In theory, he has no work commitments and isn’t out looking for killers, but that isn’t really true. He misses his job a lot: that continual tension that drives him to solve an intricate case, poke around in people’s souls, and put together his intuitions and reflections to obtain justice for those who have been wronged. Bordelli simply can’t give up this passion of his. The only one he can turn to is young Inspector Piras, his right-hand man when he was still working, who involves him in cases while making light of the risks of being found out. And just in the same period, as Bordelli tries to uncover another long-buried truth, his own life will take an unexpected turn.

Marco Vichi’s first novel was L’inquilino (Guanda) in 1999. It was only in his third novel, Il commissario Bordelli, in 2002, that the character who would feature in fourteen novels and various short stories, including Notti nere, would appear. All of them were set in the late 1950s and the 1960s. In 2003, Vichi edited a volume for Fazi that contained a number of tributes to John Fante; and he also wrote a documentary on the same author, directed by Giovanna Di Lello. That year, he started holding writing workshops in various Italian cities, and until 2009, Vichi worked for the degree program in Media and Journalism, held at the University of Florence. His novel Il nuovo venuto (2004) won the Fedeli Award. Four years later, Vichi won multiple awards for Morte a Firenze (Guanda), among them the Scerbanenco Award and the Camaiore Award. In 2010, with Morte a Firenze (Guanda), Inspector Bordelli made his comic book debut, thanks to illustrations by Werther Dell’Edera. More recently, in 2022, Guanda brought out Non tutto è perduto, the eleventh adventure of Inspector Bordelli, and the novel Ombre. The twelfth and thirteen installments on Bordelli came out in 2023 and 2024: Nulla si distrugge and Meglio di niente. 2024 also saw the publication of Il ritorno. This year, Vichi is back with Notti nere and Occhi di bambina.