In the Name of Ishmael Book

A stunning literary thriller of international political intrigue, In the Name of Ishmael features two interlocking stories that weave a gripping conspiracy plot with a serial killer narrative-culminating in a shattering climax that delivers an astonishing surprise.

Milan, 1962. David Montorsi, an earnest young police detective, is obsessed by a death that his colleagues conspicuously ignore: a child found murdered and half-buried under a World War II monument in a soccer stadium. Montorsi's investigation leads him into a world of secret assassinations and danger-engineered, it seems, by the elusive figure named Ishmael.

Milan, 2001. Another detective, Guido Lopez-jaded almost past caring-investigates the random killing of a stranger on the street. Against his will he is ensnared in a plot that leads him deep into Europe's political underworld where bizarre and ritualistic acts of sex and murder-orchestrated by Ishmael-ultimately threaten the security of the West.

In their parallel quests to uncover the identity of Ishmael, Montorsi and Lopez struggle to assemble pieces of the puzzle that connect to a series of inexplicable events, from the killing of an Italian press magnate to a sadomasochistic secret society. Both are led ever closer to the seemingly omnipotent yet invisible Ishmael-who may not only direct the deaths of innocents but determine the fates of nations.

Set in a Milan shadowed by rain, cold, and menace, as well as in Paris, Frankfurt, and Brussels, and spanning not just generations but a Europe and an America in profound conflict, In the Name of Ishamel is both an extraordinarily original thriller and a bold exploration of the hidden uses of power.

About the Author

Giuseppe Genna was born in Milan in 1969. He has worked in Italian television and was the editor-in-chief of Poesia, a literary journal. In the Name of Ishmael is his first U.S. publication.

The New Yorker

This baroque thriller, set in a Milan where mist seems to continually pour from the ground, opens with two apparently unconnected events: the discovery of a murdered child, buried under a war memorial, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962; and, almost four decades later, the shooting of a man in the street on the eve of an international political conference. Chapters shift between the two detectives pursuing the investigations. The tortuous plot -- involving sadomasochistic clubs, fringe sects, and assassins -- hinges on the historical figure of Enrico Mattei, an Italian industrialist who died in a plane crash in 1962 under suspicious circumstances. The author, a poet and journalist, writes with jittery, propulsive energy, and he can stop the reader cold with a single image, as when he describes, at the crash site of Mattei's plane, the unbroken, blood-stained trees.