I loved this book which drew me in and gripped me from the opening chapter. Taut and tightly plotted it is an atmospheric thriller that is impeccably plotted and written.

Excellent characterisations too and all in all an exceptional book,

Hitherto, Carrisi’s books have been very long, and somewhere in the middle the supernatural has usually made an appearance, though sometimes it’s a conference of priests with forbidden knowledge. The plots usually hinge on violence towards women (here a kidnapped young girl), and the décor is usually dark night. This time it's fog in a mountain village and there’s no priest, but there is an evangelical church whose congregation calls itself the brotherhood. The pattern is familiar. The story opens on a psychiatrist who has been called to the police station in the middle of the night, where a detective is being held after a traffic accident. Flores and the detective have a kind of retrospective on the crime ‘which changed everything’ (one of the refrains in the course of the book).
There are lots of shifts of narrator and/or character, building to an also-familiar multi-twist ending. There are also subheadings throughout to indicate shifts in time as well as place. This jumping about, is not an unusual structure, and contains refrains, such as—the first one--sixty-two days after the disappearance. Of course, it is often used to challenge readers to keep track of what’s gone on, or is going on. Sometimes there are one-word chimes, ‘trophy’, for example.
The main investigator of the child’s disappearance is a cynical detective who runs his cases dressed in high-end suits and expensive shoes. His journalistic connexion is a ‘blonde, elegant, aggressively beautiful’ stereotype in ‘vertiginously high heels’ (in winter, in the slush) who will eventually parlay her reporting into a television programme. They are two of a kind, alert to the media and how to manipulate them. Vogel, the detective, is a sham, who manipulates the investigation, which begins to point at a literature teacher in the local upper school. Loris Martini, the teacher, insists that he has had nothing to do with the crime, but Vogel wants the publicity, and so does the journalist, Stella Honer. So, also does Levi, a stereotypical lawyer who swoops in to take over the defence. Names can be important, and so can their absences: ‘Vogel’ (German for ‘bird’—he doesn’t have a first name, unless you count ‘special agent’), ‘Stella’ (‘Star’), ‘Martini’, which is just a common Italian surname, suitable for an ordinary joe. The psychiatrist is Auguste Flores (‘flower’), whose first name we hear only once. Where this book is a departure for Carrisi is towards psychological suspense, so the psychiatrist, with whom the book begins, has been called back into the hospital to listen to Vogel, who, sixty-two days after the disappearance, has been in a car crash and is now suffering some kind of shock; he says (here’s the supernatural), ‘There’s something evil here… Something evil has insinuated itself into your lives’.
That’s the beginning, in which we hear a lot from the shrink. It’s also the ending, more or less. Elsewhere, we hear a lot from Martini. Howard Curtis’s translation is good, I think better than some of his earlier books, and certainly good enough not to call attention to itself. Nevertheless, this is a novel shaped by the conventions of a currently popular subgenre, with which it doesn’t do very much. The most instrumental example has to do with Vogel, and that’s all I can say about it without a spoiler--which is a compliment of sorts.

Although not quite as gripping as The Whisperer (one of my top ten crime thrillers), The Girl in the Fog is a great read. The plots dances about between different time periods so it is easier to read in large chunks over a short period of time.

I enjoyed Carrisi’s skill in developing the main character, Vogel. His character flaws become revealed as the book goes on and his egocentric approach to crime solving becomes less and less appealing.

This book raises interesting questions about the role of the media in high profile crimes and the benefit or threat they can bring to a case.

This is my first book by this author and based on what I have read here, it probably won't be the last. This was an intricately plotted book with very interesting characters, full of secrets and lies and duplicitous behaviour that kept me guessing pretty much right until the end.
We start with the aftermath of an accident. A man is in a confused state and given over to the care of Dr Flores, a psychiatrist. There was a road accident but the blood does not appear to belong to the man. We then go back in time a few months to a few days after a girl has gone missing. As this thread play out, we learn that the man from the beginning was Vogel, the agent in charge of the investigation into the girl's disappearance. As the book progresses, we flit in time - backwards and forwards in the missing girl case and occasionally returning to the present day as Vogel remembers more.
There's a lot going on in this book. As well as what happened at the beginning, we have the girl's disappearance. We also have what is happening in the media as they get wind of each and every suspect. Usurping the authorities in trying to dig up and dish out dirt on each one. We also have Vogel and his baggage from a previous case. This new one being his last ditch attempt to get his reputation back on track. We have all these factions pulling against each other mainly for their own gains, forgetting that, at the heart of it all, there's still a missing girl; interesting spin on things and made for a refreshing change. We have all the usual secrets and lies that you would expect from a book of the genre. We also have the requisite twists, turns and manipulations necessary for the story to progress; all very well thought out and presented in clever ways.
As already mentioned, the story flits about in time quite a bit and mostly in a random sort of way. You'd think that this would be confusing but it actually wasn't. I don't know exactly why but I suspect it was because the right things were discovered at the right times to make the story flow better and make more sense. It also really helped that each chapter was headed appropriately and that the majority of chapters were short and punchy.
The ending for me did fall a little flat. There were a few things that I just didn't quite think worked for me. Nothing major, just some small stuff that didn't quite sit right in my head.
The characters were a mixed up hotch potch of mostly unlikable individuals. I'd love to go into details and qualify that statement here but however I try and form the words, they start to become spoilers and that would never do. I also think that this book would be better served going in with no preconceptions about the characters and their motivations. I would however generalise and say that they were all, within their characteristics, very well formed and credible.
All in all, a good solid read that kept my attention very well throughout but didn't quite leave me wholly satisfied at the end. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

This is an intricate puzzle of a psychological crime mystery set in the Italian Alpine village of Avechot. It begins with special agent Vogel involved in an accident covered in blood, assumed to be responsible for a murder. He is in the care of Dr Flores, a psychiatrist charged with finding out the truth of what has occured given Vogel's memory is so poor. We then go back to his arrival in the village after a local girl, Anna Lou Kastner, has gone missing. Local police have not prioritised her disappearance, thinking that she will turn up. Vogel is carrying baggage from his last case, The Mutilator, where he was widely discredited with his arrest of a suspect, who served four years in prison, but who turned out to be innocent, although not in Vogel's eyes. He is desperate to restore his reputation and he sees Anna's disappearance as the means to achieve this.

Vogel heads the case, assisted by Borghi, keen to learn from Vogel. It would be an error to suggest that Vogel investigates. It would be fairer to say that he manipulates the case. He is a seasoned operator when it comes to the media, and he manipulates the media with a view to getting resources that locally have been denied. A young boy with a penchant for videoing with his camcorder, whom Anna befriended, obsessively followed Anna becomes the first suspect, then followed by a local teacher. In the past, Vogel has been less than scrupolous when it came to securing evidence. Denied the opportunities to arrest and charge the man he has decided is guilty, will Vogel fall back on his dirty practices? The only evidence he has is circumstancial. In the meantime, Anna's story gains notoriety and leads to the village attracting huge numbers of crime tourists.

This is a tense and engaging novel with the perfect antihero in Vogel, the arch manipulator who could not be less concerned about looking for the guilty party behind the missing Anna. There are a number of twists in this well plotted story packed with intrigue. Other girls, similar in appearance to Anna, have disappeared locally in the past although hardly anyone remembers this which seems so unlikely. The truth is unexpected as we find out what happened to Anna and the other girls from the past. This is more a psychological thriller than a police procedural as we find out why Vogel is covered in blood. If you like dark and twisted crime stories, then this is likely to appeal. Many thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC.

In The Girl in the Fog, Donato Carrisi poses some interesting questions about the ever-increasing role of the media in crime and how the general public, looking on from the outside, choose to process the information, but it is really let down by an inherently unlikeable main character and a god-awful ending.
Instead of focussing on the missing girl at the focus of the investigation, the narrative instead centres on the man running it - Vogel, an arrogant, selfish man with a penchant for fame, nice suits and ignoring facts of the investigation and the evidence if it doesn’t fit into his strict view of what a murder-kidnap should entail. He doesn’t care about the girl, or the horrendous situation her family is going through, he only wants to capture the villainous figure who snatched young Anna Lou away and become a hero in the eyes of the ever-watching onlookers.
And honestly, try as I might, I couldn’t care about her anyway. Aside from her love of cats and her bright red hair, the reader learns virtually nothing about Anna Lou’s character. You see her just the same way that Vogel sees her - a faceless victim who has fallen prey to the real focus of the story.
Ah, but who is the real focus of the story, the monster looming in the shadows just waiting for young innocents to skip passed? The most ridiculous monster ever. Can I just say that I have never, in my who know’s how many years of reading, ever come across a murder-mystery book with a more ludicrous motive for killing someone? I actually sat down with my grandma (whose second opinion has become vital now that I have started reading such a wide variety of books) after the book’s conclusion to attempt to explain the killer’s thought-process and confused myself even more. My mind still hurts thinking about it.
Which is shame because for the first 95% of the book, I was really enjoying myself. Sure, the characters weren’t likeable in the slightest and some of the wording of the sentences were a bit off, but it was addictive and fast-paced and really easy to read. It questioned whether the court of public opinion means more than the real one, whether the media truly has the power to make someone a villain and if the public really does care more about the perpetrator of a particular crime than its victim.
Honestly, in that, Anna Lou - like all of the people whose lives have ended in this truly horrific way - deserved better. Vogel and the rest of the police force half-arses the investigation, concerned far more for the flashing lights of the cameras; he doesn’t consider questioning her best friend, leads shoddy searches for her body and doesn’t even bother telling her parents when they apprehend a suspect. I mean, if they’d had done a good job of my second-point they may have had a better chance of finding her remains so that her parents could reach closure or may have had the chance, however unlikely, to find her alive.
Reading this book has left me with a lot to think about - and a lot of things in human nature to be horrified about, our apathy being a major one - but I just think that it had so much potential to be brilliant and it really did miss the mark.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for an advance copy of The Girl in the Fog, a stand alone police procedural set in the mountains of Northern Italy.

I thoroughly enjoyed The Girl in the Fog which is a mesmerising read with some incredible twists at the end. As this is my first novel by Mr Carrisi I can't judge his approach but I found it unusual and highly effective. The novel begins 62 days after 16 year old Anna Lou Kastner's disappearance when Vogel is arrested after a car crash with blood on clothes. As he is physically unharmed but disorientated he is interviewed by psychiatrist Dr Flores and the story of his investigation into Anna Lou's disappearance follows.

Most of the novel hinges on Vogel's unorthodox investigative techniques. From the start he is convinced that Anna Lou has been kidnapped and is probably dead so he uses the media to drum up interest which, in turn, gets him the resources he needs. He is an ambiguous character with no morals or scruples and Mr Carrisi exploits this fully - I was never totally sure what his involvement in Anna Lou's disappearance was. He is an inspired creation.

The novel also backtracks to see the investigation from the point of view of one of the prime suspects which further demonstrates Vogel's dodgy investigative methods and allows the author to cast further doubt on his personality through the views of others. It is also a telling indictment of how the press and public react to a named suspect.

The contrast between the two stories is gripping. Fortunately they mostly run consecutively rather than concurrently so each narrative is complete, allowing the reader to concentrate on each without distraction.

Mr Carrisi makes the point on more than one occasion that no one remembers the victims, only the killers and Anna Lou is a case in point. She is an innocuous, innocent child who loves cats and goes to church. She is incidental to Vogel's hunt for a potential killer and almost less than that to the killer. It is cleverly done.

The Girl in the Fog is a character driven novel but the plot is also well done. The slow build up of events and discoveries is fascinating. I never knew where it was going and the twists at the end are amazing, clever and a real surprise. This may be my first novel by Mr Carrisi but it won't be the last.

Lastly I would like to say that I think Howard Curtis's translation is very good. There is no awkwardness in it and it reads well.

The Girl in the Fog is a clever, compulsive read, probably one of my books of the year which I have no hesitation in recommending.