White Death

Castagnetti, a bee-keeping private detective, is hired by a businessman to find out who set fire to his car and why. It seems like a dead-end case, nothing more than an instance of mindless vandalism. But before long the businessman is receiving threatening phone calls, his factory is burnt to the ground and an employee loses his life.

Castagnetti traces similar cases of arson across the city and realises that this sort of systematic intimidation happens when the owner’s land is about to be redesignated as residential. The last person to stand in the developers’ way was whacked in Milan a year ago. Castagnetti needs to solve the case before his client, and his city, are both buried in cement.

WHITE DEATH was first published by Faber in April 2011.

“Following his excellent debut…Jones writes with understanding, intelligence and prescience about the country of Berlusconi, bunga-bunga and bungs all round.”
– Guardian

“White Death is just the second adventure for the Parma PI known as Castagnetti, but already his creator, Tobias Jones, is being hailed as the new Michael Dibdin, the godfather of Italian crime writing in English.”
– Irish Times

“As well as being a highly readable page-turning thriller, WHITE DEATH is a convincing depiction of Italy”
– Euro Crime