The Dark Side of the Moon

Cairo Publishing

The Dark Side of the Moon

Milan: the early Seventies. Ofelio Guerini, an elephantine police commissioner originally from Romagna and one-time Communist militant, bumps into the strange homicide of a sports field guardian, an old man murdered in his home by three stab wounds to the abdomen. Before his last breath the victim managed to leave two signs on the floor, two clues to help identify his murderers. If the crime is strange, which seems not to have any plausible motive, even stranger is what strikes the commissioner, the house where the murder took place, a kind of sanctuary for Communism and its external symbols. And so a rather delicate investigation begins. An investigation where political passion is an overwhelming theme primarily the victim’s, but also the murderers’ and, subtly but deeply, the commissioner’s who over the years has left, though not abjuring, the Communist Party due to fatigue and painful reflection. The inquest will be long, studded with indecipherable facts and unexpected discoveries. Behind the screen of his apparent certainties, Guerini increasingly catches a reflection of sombre dissonances that seem to swallow up any trace of human dignity. Meanwhile, the search for a solution to the mystery becomes more and more hazardous, unpredictable, even incongruous. And even when the commissioner does succeed in sighting the dark side of the moon, he has the sensation of having been a pawn in a game much bigger than he is.ì