While Nadia Dalbuono’s crime novel, The Hit, has been out in Australia and the U.K., this is the first edition published in the United States. The third Leone Scarmacio, set in the television world, is evidence of the author’s knowledge of that field. She has been a documentary director and consultant for the last sixteen years.

Detective Leone Scarmacio is one of Rome’s top police detectives. He doesn’t understand why he’s called in to investigate a hit-and-run, until his boss explains the wife and son of a prominent television executive, Micky Proietti, were kidnapped during the incident. A fake ambulance, even a fake witness, were involved. Proietti isn’t very cooperative, although he’s drinking heavily.

As Leone investigates, he learns a lot of people might have wanted to make Proietti sweat, including his brother-in-law. But, it’s Micky’s debt to the Mafiosa that makes Scarmacio sweat. Despite his own principles, he owes a debt to a boss who once a lieutenant in the Calabrian mob. Now, the only way to find answers, and to save himself, is to head to Calabria to ask questions of elderly men who once owed allegiance to Leone’s dead father, a godfather of the mob in that area.

Scarmarcio is an intriguing character. This is an intricately plotted police procedural, the third in a series, following The American. It’s an atmospheric, complex case involving the world of television production, Rome, and the Mafiosa. Readers who enjoy international crime novels, or police procedurals set in Italy, might want to try Nadia Dalbuono’s books.

Nadia Dalbuono’s website is https://nadiadalbuono.com

The Hit by Nadia Dalbuono. Scribe, 2019. ISBN 9781947534643 (paperback), 320p.

*****

FTC Full Disclosure – I received the book to review for a journal.