The White Devil

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What to expect

TIN THE STREETS OF ROME, VICKI WILSON'S LOVERS KEEP TURNING UP DEAD.

Vittoria, as she's known in Italy, is a small-time actress who left behind a dark past in her native Texas and followed her fading writer husband to the Eternal City.

Guided by her controlling brother Johnny, Vittoria soon enters the upper circles of Roman society, mingling with shady cardinals and corrupt senators. Among them is Paolo Orsini, who quickly falls prey to Vittoria's charms. Too bad he's married; too bad his wife, an aging film icon, is murdered.

From the ravishing beauty of Rome to the pristine beaches of Malibu, Vittoria finds herself at the heart of a lethal chase, spiralling dangerously out of control...

Read by Laurence Bouvard
(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

Critics Review

  • Domenic Stansberry had the inspired idea of transposing The White Devil, John Webster’s first great tragedy, to present day Rome, lacing it with aphoristic wit and recounting it in an eerie, shimmering flow.

    Irish Times - Best Crime Fiction of 2018
  • Excellent… Stansberry deserves to be better known… Menace, murder and eroticism lurk.

    Marcel Berlins, The Times
  • Intoxicating… Rome is brilliantly captured, as is Italian society, but it is the tragic heroine and her flawed brother that linger in the mind.

    Daily Mail
  • A glittering noir triumph… Brilliantly reimagined, fast-moving, aphoristic and recounted in a delirious, shimmering erotic flow, The White Devil is a possessed, fever dream of a book, an unwise third cocktail that proves impossible to resist.

    The Irish Times
  • A stunning piece of noir, loosely based on John Webster’s classic Renaissance play, which evokes both the Rome of Fellini and shades of Patricia Highsmith… Love triangles, an insidiously seedy atmosphere of corruption unleashed, a femme fatale like no other and a lush background makes for a breathless tale which shifts effortlessly from beauty to crime, in a both lyrical and terse, Hemingway-like narrative… You keep on rooting for the morally dubious heroine even though you know she is not to be trusted until her inevitable fall from grace. A revelation.

    Crime Time, Book of the Month
  • One of the classiest pieces of noir you’ll read this year… It is atmospheric, deliberately ambiguous, vengeful, by turns sultry and icy in tone with a leading female character you want to trust but simply dare not.

    Mike Ripley, Shots Mag

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