Tobias Jones Livres

Share your belongings and start belonging aEURO the story of Windsor Hill Wood

An exploration of the dark side of football, of Italy and of far right politics and organised crime: the hard core fans known as the ultras.

Utopian Dreams offers one writer's attempt to retreat from the 'real world' - which is making him emptier and angrier by the day - and seek out the alternatives to modern manners and morality.

It's not until 2010, when Elisa's decomposed body is found in the church where she went missing, that the two cases are linked and Restivo is finally dealt with.

In 1999 Tobias Jones emigrated to Italy, expecting to discover the pastoral bliss described by centuries of foreign visitors. Instead, he discovered a very different country, besieged by unfathomable terrorism and deep-seated paranoia, where crime is scarcely ever met with punishment. The Dark Heart of Italy is Jones' account of his three-year voyage across the Italian peninsula. Jones is preoccupied not by Italy's art, climate, or cuisine, but by the livelier and stranger sides of the Bel Paese: language, football, Catholicism, cinema, television and terrorism. Why, he wonders, is there a parliamentary commission investigating Italy's terrorist 'slaughters', and why do bombs still explode every time politics start getting serious? Why does everyone urge him to go home as soon as possible, saying that Italy is a 'brothel'? And why do people warn him that 'Clean Hands' only disguise 'Dirty Feet'? Slowly, though, one clear truth emerges: the entire country is in the hands of one man. He owns banks, estate agencies, mobile phone companies - not to mention half the television channels, one of the best football teams, and great swathes of Milan. His personal wealth is estimated at $14 billion. And now, thanks to his coalition with 'Post-Fascists', he - Silvio Berlusconi - has become President of the Ministerial Council. Could this be why everyone in Italy is so paranoid?

Castagnetti (informally known as 'Casta') is a private detective who doesn't do things by the book. He's dogged and lonely, impatient with the world of appearances and deceit. So when a pompous notary commissions him to verify that a missing person is "presumed dead" in order to dispose of a dead woman's estate to the other heirs, Casta smells a rat. Before long he's reopening wounds from years ago and exposing family secrets to those who have tried to suppress them.The relatives of Signora Salati just want their their inheritance, but Casta is going to make sure they get their just desserts as well. Because Casta isn't the sort to content himself with "presumed dead". He likes certainty, the kind of certainty that comes from seeing a skeleton. As the Salati case progresses, other corpses appear and Casta realises he's at the centre of an old-fashioned Italian whodunit.The Salti Case marks the appearance of a new and memorable detective: an orphan who has pulled himself up from the mean streets.

But before long the businessman is receiving threatening phonecalls, his factory is burnt to the ground and an employee loses his life. Castagnetti traces similar cases of arson across the city and realises that this sort of systematic intimidation happens when the owner's land is about to be redesignated as residential.

A journey along the River Po and through Italian history, society and culture, from journalist and author Tobias Jones.