Alessandro Perissinotto is an Italian writer. He was born in 1964 and teaches semiology at the University of Turin. He was awarded the highly prestigious Grinzane Cavour Prize, in 2005, for Al mio Giudice (To My Judge). In 2012, he won the Fenice Europa Prize for Semina Il Vento. Several of his works have been published in French, including L’Anno che uccisero Rosetta (L’Année où Rosetta a été tuée), which was published by Editions Odile Jacob in 2011.

A room that has been locked from within; the body of a man with a severed carotid; a young woman, her clothes splattered with blood, who seems to be the obvious culprit, but who doesn’t remember anything. For the local police in this Tunisian holiday resort, the case seems clear-cut: a lovers’ quarrel that ended badly. The police officers have seen their share of one-night stands at the resort. Despite the overwhelming evidence, Anna Pavesi does not think the young woman is guilty. But she must find the real culprit and answer the routine question: Who benefits from the crime?
In the artificial atmosphere of a holiday resort, surrounded by insouciant holidaymakers, the compassionate psychologist and amateur detective Anna Pavesi carries out her investigation. What she discovers is fairly unsavoury: porn videos shot without the protagonists’ knowledge, blackmail, manipulation, revenge. Meanwhile, mimicking the Titanic’s orchestra, who carried on playing as the ship sank, the partying goes on, as if nothing had happened.

• The final work in the trilogy with Anna Pavesi, the psychologist turned detective
• The previous volumes in the trilogy were published in French in Gallimard’s Série Noire