Amanda is a mysterious, beautiful, cultured, refined woman with multiple talents. She has two degrees and a passion for gaming tables. In front of the green baize she is an ace. Amanda is also the daughter of Tony Jack, a veteran of the first Gulf War who Inspector Alex Brando saw killed before his eyes twenty-five years earlier, when he was a rookie policeman in Rome.

It seems like a window opens onto a past whose scars still burn, and it is almost impossible to heal the wounds. Why did Amanda move to a quiet town in Salento? Is the only thrill she seeks breaking the bank at the gambling houses? Or does she want to take justice into the hands of the man who gave the order to kill her father?

While Inspector Brando investigates the apparent accidental death of an unknown man nicknamed The Stiltman, another news story shocks the local community: the alleged suicide of Marta, an eighteen-year-old her father portrays as a model student, a young woman apparently without shadows. But the autopsy reveals a completely different story.

What links Marta, Amanda and the Stilt Walker? Brando has the task and the obsession of shedding light on a series of seemingly inexplicable murders. He digs beneath the hypocritical veneer of the conventions of a society anchored to archaic habits. Together with his faithful friend Nico Boscolo, a ruined former policeman, mentor and part-time investigator, Alex Brando explores the dark soul behind the centuries-old violence of a land scorched by the sun and petrified by the heat. Evil emerges not only as a shadow of the past that precedes us at every step but also as indifference to the injustice of an anesthetized society that relegates the unwanted to the slums.

A noir novel of great impact. A story told with a dry prose that is very similar to that of the masters of crime in American literature. A thriller that will tie you to the pages, making you immerse yourself in dreamlike atmospheres and thrilling events. Suspense guaranteed until the last page.