Review Tour + #Giveaway: Crimes After Hours by Daniela Alibrandi @danielaalibrand @GoddessFish

CRIME AFTER HOURS

Daniela Alibrandi

GENRE: Noir Multidimension Thriller

BLURB:

Alice, a shrewish and nosy typist stays in the office after duty hours to rummage through the personal effects of her hateful colleagues, who've mocked her for years, in search of compromising material to use against them. At the same time and in the very same neighborhood, a serial killer with a split personality is lurking, intent on carrying out his cruel game, entrusting the choice of his next unsuspecting victim to chance. The solitary lives of typist Alice and Cold Hands/Warm Hands are destined to fatally intertwine in the dark and unknown underground of the Prati district of Rome. The investigations into the trail of senseless crimes that Cold Hands leaves behind are entrusted to Riccardo Rosco, a commissioner with a rough character and a disastrous private life.

Will Alice uncover the secrets she so desperately seeks, or will she become the next pawn in Cold Hands' deadly game? Time is running out, and in the shadows of Rome, no one is safe. Don't miss this pulse-pounding thriller where every choice could be fatal.

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Excerpt:

Often, she had thought about it, every time she had seen her colleagues leaving one by one, each caught up in the vortex of their own lives from which they already seemed to be sucked in. She watched them while some left slowly, some more hurriedly, all putting on their coats and hats and disappearing beyond the entrance door, at the end of the smoky hallway. Remaining in the office after working time, that was the thought lingering in her mind for a while. That would be the right moment when she could start her own personal investigation, uncovering what their lives might be hiding.

Everyone had managed to establish sentimental relationships, some stable and others fleeting, and each one had something that drew outside of those gray and anonymous walls. Not her, though; she had long been labeled as antisocial, bitter, single, introverted, irritable, and difficult, despite her age not yet surpassing thirty-five years.

And now finally she was alone, walking down the hallway where office doors opened, moistening her thin lips with the tongue, like someone about to eat a tasty meal, free to delve into the lives of others.

The door had creaked slightly. The warm light from the lamp left on the desk greeted her like the torch of a cinema mask, giving her the same urge to uncover a new story, a vulnerable world that revealed itself in all its fragility. The time and tranquility allowed her to settle into the comfortable dark leather swivel armchair, much more comfortable than the rigid chair where she was forced to sit for hours at the typewriter.

She played with it for a few minutes, twirling it around, enjoying the effect of being able to gain a different height, higher if it spun to the right, lower if to the left. Then she started caressing the edge of the desk, as if to test the reality that the coward touched every day, until she decided to squat down and start rummaging through his drawers, starting with those that didn't seem to be locked.

My Review:

Crimes After Hours grabbed my attention from the first page and continued until the last page. It is packed full of mystery and suspense that helps to keep the pages turning. Crimes After Hours is a very engrossing story that will pull you deep into the dark and unknown underground of the Prati district of Rome. 

Crimes After Hours tells the story of Alice who likes to snoop in her fellow employee's offices after hours trying to dig up things about them that she could use against them at an opportune time. 

Crimes After Hours also tells the story of a man known only as Cold Hands/Warm Hands. He likes to lie in wait for unsuspecting suspects looking for his next victim. 

Cold Hands/Warm Hands is out looking for his next victim when he spots Alice one night as she is on her way home. Cold Hands/Warm Hands stalks Alice waiting for the right time to make his move. 

Alice meets a nice and warm young man whom she is drawn to instantly. Alice is a person who likes to keep to herself. Alice finds it hard to trust people but this guy makes it kind of easy to trust him. But can she? Who is this guy?

The descriptions are well done, making it easy to visualize what I was reading. I could see Alice walking the streets of Rome on a dark, cold, and rainy night, dressed in her raincoat, as the rain came down to drench her. 

Crimes After Hours is a great thriller story that is sure to keep you awake at night. Grab a copy of Crimes After Hours today if you dare!

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Daniela Alibrandi is the author of successful thrillers and noirs in Italy and abroad. With her sixteen published novels, five English editions and many short stories she is often guest on Italian RAI television and radio broadcasts, she is present in the most important national literary Italian book fairs. Some of her Italian editions are present in Harvard and Yale libraries as well as in New York Public Library. She has won numerous national literary awards, including the Women Arts Week 2022 for her literary career. For years and from various sources, such as literary critics and reviewers, this author’s style has been defined as multidimensional, until it was officialized as MultiDimensionCrime (Acronym MDCrime). A reading experience that forges imagination in a multi-dimensional way. In the complex and intertwined plots of her novels, which lead to sudden and unexpected twists, the characteristics of different strands are harmoniously blended. The reader follows the investigation to solve a murder and at the same time he amazingly enters the mind of the killer, reasoning alongside him, preparing the crime with him, and even partaking in the victims’ despair and terror. All in a growing suspense, both during the narration and in the final pages, when the reader often has to question all the beliefs he has developed during the reading.

On last July 18th, Daniela Alibrandi published her English edition of the book “Crimes After Hours”. And the settings the author chooses are always amazing and palpable. That’s what we find in “Crimes After Hours”, set in the city of Rome and in its underground world, during the late Seventies.

“Crimes After Hours”, in its Italian edition, has won two national literary prizes (Mondadori Contest and Grottammare Noir Competition) and is the first of the MDCrime series Rome’s Multi-Dimensional Crimes, set in Rome’s undergrounds between the late Seventies and the Eighties, whose plots are not connected and can be read independently, all standalone.

Connect with Daniela Alibrandi

Author’s English Website ~ Author’s Italian Website

Facebook Author Page ~ Twitter/X ~ LinkedIn ~ Instagram

 

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