This novel is set in Bologna over the winter of 1944–45. Because both the Allies and the Germans had declared it an exclusion zone, there were no troops there, and the Allies refrained from bombing it. Consequently, it was filled with 600,000 refugees.
Commissario DeLuca has been assigned to the Political Division, although for most of his career he has been a homicide investigator. A few days after examining a naked corpse, he is summoned by the SS, told that the deceased was an SS officer, and tasked with finding the killer. He is told that if he can't find the killer, ten hostages will be shot. That same morning, the local prefect asks him to look into a different murder, and a fellow citizen, likely in the Resistance, asks him to take on a third case. Just about everyone in Bologna is freezing cold, half-starved, and all of them consistently lie to DeLuca. The Germans say little and are perennially dismissive of the Italians. The Italians are fed up with the war and don’t trust a soul. The city is the height of despair, hoping only to survive until spring. DeLuca navigates through treachery and slowly strings together the answers. This is a very good procedural, and more importantly, a superb depiction of a community and a people at the end of their rope.
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