Book review: The Hunter of the Dark is a fun and disturbing read that teeters on the edge of the preposterous
Donato Carrisi delivers a rollicking thriller of conspiracies and serial murder set in a Rome of secrets and myths
by Donato Carrisi
Abacus
In the first pages of Donato Carrisi’s new thriller, The Hunter of the Dark, we are introduced to Marcus, an amnesiac who has woken up to discover he’s a priest, and not just your common or garden variety. He is told by his mentor, perhaps a little portentously, “The last representative of a holy order. A penitenziere [a priest who administers penance] … Once, though, people called you hunters of the dark.”
It’s a pleasingly dramatic opening for a novel that is happy to shade into melodrama. Marcus, who takes up his task willingly, is able to see “what others didn’t see. He saw evil. He detected it in the details, in the anomalies. Tiny tears in the fabric of normality. A low-frequency sound hidden in the chaos.” He’s put on the trail of the “Monster of Rome”, a serial killer who has been gruesomely knocking off couples around the Eternal City while easily eluding the police. Also on the case is forensic analyst Sandra Vega, a woman Marcus first met in Carrisi’s The Lost Girls of Rome – he is drawn to her, despite his vows of secrecy and celibacy, and she shares information from the police investigation with him.
