The ensuing years have ravaged her appearance and embittered her mind. As if that weren’t enough, her son Jacopo, a small-time delinquent, stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. Her trial lawyer has died, so, for the appeal, she turns to Guerrieri as her last hope.

Guido is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza’s son, nor does he have fond memories of the way their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth. His old friend Carmelo Tancredi, a retired police inspector, and his girlfriend, the charming investigator Annapaola Doria are once again by his side.

A masterful, compassionate novel, striking a balance between a straightforward trial story -some say the purest distillation of human experience – and the sad notes of time as it passes and exhausts itself.

Khafaji has lived long enough in pre- and post-Saddam Iraq to know that clinging on to anything but poetry and his daughter, Mrouj, is asking for trouble. Nabbed by the Americans and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib, Khafaji is offered only one way out – he has to work for the CPA to rebuild the Iraqi Police Services. But it’s only after US forces take Mrouj that he figures out a way to make his collaboration palatable, and even rewarding.

Soon, he is investigating the disappearance of young translators working for the US Army.