Summary
A Roman sleuth with a bloodhound’s nose for vendetta, Guila Ferrati, crosses the Atlantic on a government leash, shadowing a clutch of old-world bravos who have washed up in Manhattan like flotsam from a sunken empire. The city, still woozy from its own adolescence, barely notices the parasite until a shoeshine boy—Tony, half-urchin, half-megaphone—trades a whisper for silver, and Ferrati’s pulse is stilled on a rain-slick pier, his mandolin-shaped heart finally hushed. Meanwhile, across the Bowery, silk-merchant Aramatti Lattori—palms perfumed with bergamot and terror—finds his child abstracted by a Black Hand cabal whose ransom notes read like baroque curses. The abduction detonates a daisy-chain of gunpowder and glass; a florist’s shop blooms into flame, a tenement staircase coughs up splinters, and the metropolis learns the Neapolitan meaning of omertà. Enter Lieutenant Cavanaugh, derby tilted like a guillotine blade, straddling two passports and a grudge older than espresso. Through trapdoors in speak-easies, across skylight chases whose shadows drip sepia, he reclaims the boy and shackles the assassins to the ghost of their own legend, shipping them back across the wine-dark Atlantic as living museum pieces.
Synopsis
The famous Italian detective, Guila Ferrati, is sent by his government to trail members of the Mafia who have landed in the U.S. As they resume their criminal activities in New York City, a bootblack named Tony overhears a conversation between Guila and the chief inspector of police. Tony informs the Mafia of Guila's arrival, resulting in the detective's murder. Meanwhile, Aramatti Lattori, a wealthy Italian merchant, receives letters from a Black Hand society threatening the kidnapping of his child unless he gives them a large sum of money. When the merchant refuses, the two Mafiosi proceed with the kidnapping, leading to a series of incidents, including a bombing, which sets the city in an uproar. Through clever ruses and daring exploits, Italian-American detective Lieutenant Cavanaugh rescues the child and extradites the Mafiosi to their homeland.
