Kill the Father by Sandrone Dazieri

She's suffering PTSD from her last assignment.  The man she wanted to take into custody was blown to bits in front of her as well as a good part of the restaurant and many other customers.  She was injured, in shock, and mentally impacted by the size of the damage.  She feels it was her fault.  So she's still not back at work.  And then they call and want her to come to the site where a child has been abducted.  She doesn't want to do it but she also doesn't want the boy to die...

Scribner sent me an ARC of this book to read for review (thank you).  It will be published January 17th.

Colomba comes and looks around but sees no clues.  The mother, who was with the child, is lying on the ground beheaded.  This is just the beginning of an ugly case.

Her boss asks her to contact the Silo boy.  He's a man now but he's very odd.  He was captured as a child and grew up locked in a silo.  He never actually saw the man who kidnapped him but he called him Father, as he was told to do.  Punishments were handed out freely.  He doesn't leave his apartment, but if he's going to help with the case, he will have to.  He has many fears, she's still having panic attacks.  Their determination to find the boy before he is killed is still their priority.

This is an Italian tale and it swerves, curls around, visits the past and the present, and eventually comes way to close to home for Colomba.  Dante becomes the hunted and a victim once again.  It's almost 500 pages and took me two days to read but it kept me reading and didn't bore me once.  The story is almost like peeling an egg.  You take a layer off and there's more underneath.  I certainly never expected Father to be who he was.

The whole time Colomba is investigating this case, she's not back on duty.  She's doing a lot of things that are over the line of legal and she almost gets killed several times.  Good thing she's tough.  I found the relationship between her and Dante interesting.  They both have had their traumas but they work well together.  I hope I get to read the next book in this series.  I care about Mr. Dazieri's characters!