Books. “Four crosses in Siena”- Presentation at the Mondadori Bookstore

The novel is a journey between crime news and city memory. Siena, April 29, 1979: it’s the day of Santa Caterina. Three murders within a few hours shock the city and the Sienese community, plunging them into terror. A girl, a young man, and an influential elderly person are killed, all three in different ways: the very young girl along the staircase leading to the basilica of San Domenico, the young electrician in the bushes near the hermitage of San Leonardo al Lago and finally the eighty-year-old – much feared in the city for blackmails and shady affairs – in a noble palace overlooking Piazza del Campo. Caterina, a fifty-year-old librarian at the Municipal Library and a person with a reserved and ordinary life, driven by an insatiable curiosity, tries to find out more together with her colleague and great friend Roberto: it will be the beginning of an authentic descent into hell. Quattro croci a Siena. Caterina and the books of others – published by Sillabe – is a mystery novel that runs between murders, districts, libraries, and the restless atmosphere of the years of lead, in a city still suspended between the elegance of its past, the political tensions of that period, and social issues such as drug use among young people. While Siena confronts the suspicion and fear spread by terrorism, with the Red Brigades in the background threatening an already fragile balance, the investigation carried out by the librarian Caterina becomes more and more personal: each victim carries a piece of a larger puzzle and each step forward reveals a tangle of secrets, resentments, and truths buried for decades. And in the background, a soundtrack that accompanies the reader. Raffaele Ascheri, a writer from Siena, has published numerous novels and investigative books. A teacher at middle schools for over twenty years, since 2018 he has served as president of the Municipal Library of Siena. At the presentation on Friday, June 12, the author will be in dialogue with the journalist Gianni Tacchi, head of the communication area of the publishing house Sillabe and collaborator of the book fairs Più libri più liberi (Rome) and Taobuk (Taormina)