Guido Guerrieri is back, one of the most beloved characters in Italian fiction, the lawyer who made readers from all over the world get passionate about Bari, the city where he lives and works, in the beautiful region of Apulia in southern Italy, leaning with its poignant melancholy on the coasts of the Adriatic Sea.

A new case for Guido, who is defending in a trial a woman who shot dead her sister's ex-partner. Self-defence or premeditated murder? How much does it matter, how much does it cost, to know whether she is innocent or guilty? How far can the brilliant avvocato Guerrieri go to obtain the acquittal of his defendant?

The painful and personal events that have affected Guido in the months preceding the trial (which led him to a dramatic reflection on his past and present) are mixed with the turmoil over the case. Its contours are ungraspable and force the lawyer to question the ethical boundaries of his profession,  even  the  possibility  of abandoning it.

A captivating, moving novel with sudden flashes of irony and humor, where nostalgia of the past, a restless look at the future and the difficulty of forgiving ourselves in the hope of new opportunities, are intertwined with a judicial tale of unparalleled pace, which nails the reader to the page.

«This is a novel about the search for happiness, about not giving up. On the side of the procedural plot, I was interested in tackling an ethical, deontological subject, in reasoning about what self-defence is, and also in talking about the subject of violence against women indirectly, from another angle. The idea of taking justice into one's own hands is a subject rich in implications. [...] My writing can be read by different people, everyone can find something in it. And that for me is a source of happiness. Reading a book the first time is like taking a road trip, if the book has a story you want to get to your destination quickly, then if you really want to understand the journey you have to do it on foot or biking». Gianrico Carofiglio interviewed by Corriere della Sera