Het jaar 401 voor Christus. Een strijder te paard komt het woestijndorp van de Syrische vrouw Abira binnenstormen. De strijder, Xeno, is als een jonge god, vol beloften van passie, avontuur en vreemde verten - en Abira laat alles achter om hem te volgen. Ze reist mee in de grootse expeditie van tienduizend Griekse soldaten naar Babylonië (het huidige Irak) en krijgt te maken met veldslagen, ontberingen, Perzische wreedheden, maar ook met hechte vriendschap en liefde. Het verloren leger is de spannende hervertelling van Anabasis, het beroemde boek van de klassiek Griekse auteur Xenophon, maar dan vanuit het perspectief van een vrouw: een weergaloze leeservaring.
(source: dizzie.nl)
"'Manfredi...shows Dan Brown how it should be done' Daily Express"
In the middle of the night at the Museum of Volterra, young archeologist Fabrizio Castellani is immersed in his work - research into the famous Etruscan statue known as 'the shade of twilight'. Completely engrossed, he is startled by the phone ringing. An icy female voice warns him to abandon his work at once. A series of gruesome killings shortly follow, throwing the people of Volterra into a panic. The victims - all involved in the descration of an unexplored tomb - have been torn to pieces by a beast of unimaginable size. Fabrizio is in charge of excavating this Etruscan tomb. Fabrizio is joined in his fearless investigation of the past by Francesca Dionisi, a vivacious young researcher, and foremost by Lieutenant Reggiani, a brilliant carabinieri officer assigned to the case. Fabrizio is convinced that a single event has set off the entire chain of events. What is hiding inside the enigmatic statue? What lies behind the bloodthirsty rage that has lain in wait for all these centuries? What tragedy is hidden behind the inscription? Will Fabrizio manage to unravel these secrets without being sucked into the spiral of violence himself?
Manfredo's prosaic second novel featuring Brooklyn Det. Sgt. Joe Rizzo (after Rizzo's War) gets off to a slow start. Rizzo, a battle-hardened veteran nearing retirement with a zen approach to his work ("It's not right, it's not wrong. It just is"), has a new detective partner, Priscilla Jackson, a lesbian African-American. Many chapters of routine police work and soap opera (Jackson's estranged from her mother, who cut her off over her sexual preference, while one of Rizzo's daughters wants to join the force against his wishes) pass before the pair start investigating the strangling homicide of ex-shoe clerk Robert Lauria. Lauria's death may be connected with a similar killing of a Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, though oddly the police don't run the NYPD computer to check for similar murders. A less than gripping whodunit plot doesn't help. Fans of contemporary New York City crime fiction will find Reggie Nadelson's Artie Cohen series (Blood Count, etc.) more realistic. (Mar.)
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In Manhattan, the murder of an acclaimed playwright will make some NYPD detective a media darling. But in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Detective Joe Rizzo has the usual fare: a mugger who preys on the elderly, a serial flasher, and the loser in a fistfight, who drunkenly seeks revenge with a hunting rifle. But then Bensonhurst has its own murder, the 62nd Precinct's first in two years. The victim is an unemployed shoe salesman, and Rizzo and his new partner get the case. Their investigation soon produces a link between the two murders, and Rizzo gets caught up in the possibility of beating Manhattan to an arrest. Rizzo's life and work are so compelling that readers will be surprised that the book's linchpin, the shoe salesman's murder, occurs almost halfway through it. Authenticity is the cornerstone of Manfredo's work (Rizzo's War, 2009), whether in his portrait of Brooklyn or his depiction of the 'murky and morally ambivalent' world of the NYPD, which Rizzo desperately wants to keep his youngest daughter from joining. Fans of gritty procedurals will love this one. --Thomas Gaughan