Donato Carrisi Books In Order

Publication Order of Mila Vasquez Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Donato Carrisi is an award winning and best selling Italian mystery author best known as the author of the “Mila Vasquez” series of novels. The author was born and raised in Martina Franca, Italy but now spends much of his time between Milan and Rome. After he graduated from college with a degree in law he specialized in behavioral science and criminology. He would then go on to become a screenwriter, director and writer of cinema and television series. His novel “The Girl in the Fog” was made into a film by the same name that was the winner of the David di Donatello best new director award. Several of his novels have also been made into TV series and films. For his work, he has been recognized in Italy and all across Europe as he has won the Italian Bancarella Award and the Prix de Poche and the Prix Polar in France. There are millions of his novels in print, most of which have been translated into more than 30 novels across the world. His debut novel “The Whisperer” which was published in 2010 has sold nearly 200, 000 copies in Italy alone where it has won both the Camaiore and the Bancarella Prizes. The rights of the novel have been sold to more than eight jurisdictions in Europe.

Unlike many authors that get their inspiration from the world around them , Donato had a very unique experience. While he was undertaking his university degree, he had to write a project and this is the time that he met a child serial killer. In their meetings, the man would usually talk in a calm and relaxed manner about the horrible crimes he had visited on innocent people. While he knows that he should have gotten up and left, he could not. He found the stories very intriguing and like the people in the room he never left. Donato Carrisi always wondered why he had that reaction and over time came to realize that the killer was very much like him. He came to the conclusion that everyone had a dark side but others answered to the call of darkness which drove them to do terrible things. From that time, he came to understand that there is no person that is either exclusively evil or good and that anyone that claimed this was dangerous. As for his influences, he cites fellow author Maurizio De Giovanni. He also likes the hypnotic and slow thrillers by Stieg Larsson given the excellent persuasion in it. But his favorite author will always be Ken Follett.

“The Whisperer” by Donato Carrisi opens with the discovery of six severed arms. The limbs had been found buried in a clearing in the forest and arranged in a bizarre manner. The investigators that found them believe five of the pairs belong to the five girls between eight and eighteen that had gone missing in the recent past. But they cannot identify the sixth pair and they have yet to find the bodies of the five girls or the location where they could be held captive. The leads in the case are a prescient criminologist named Goran Gavila and celebrated profiler Mila Vasquez. They believe they have the right man in their sights but the thing is there is no connection between him and the six kidnappings aside from the very first case. The clues they find in the second case points them in a very different direction and offers more questions than answers. Gavial and Vasquez are wondering if they had been invited to investigate the case just to be fall guys. Could it be a copycat criminal at work or just a coincidence? They develop an obsession with a case that becomes more intense and tangled over time. But over time, as Vasquez and Gavila spend more time together they find their lives get more intertwined.

In “The Vanished Ones” by Donato Carrisi continues to follow the adventures of the detective Mila Vasquez. Every time she goes into the missing person’s office she has hundreds of eyes staring back at her. This makes it impossible for her to forget about the many people that had gone missing with no trace over the years. She has dark marks all over her skin that look like red flowers and this is perhaps why she is so good at her job since it involves some dark and complicated cases. While over the years she has grown used to seeing the missing people, she is always apprehensive that some of them could turn up with some very dark intentions. Like a current beneath the surface, the darkness brings forth objects from the distant past followed by people. They are very much like what they were before they had vanished but what people do not know is that they have been changed by evil. They cannot give a satisfactory answer about where they were and why they had come back. Mila soon realizes that stopping such a huge and evil army will require more than simple investigations.

Donato Carrisi’s “Into the Labyrinth” opens to an anomalous heat wave overwhelming everything and changing the rhythms of life for almost everyone. It is only when night falls that people can move, work and survive. It is also during the night that thirteen year old Samantha comes out after she was kidnapped and held prisoner for years. Immediately she gets out, she is taken to a hospital and put under the charge of extraordinary profiler Dr. Green. Green is an expert at hunting down monsters that reside in the minds of traumatized people. He believes that by getting into her memories he can get the clues that will lead to the capture of the Man of the Labyrinth that had kidnapped and held her prisoner. But she is not the only one interested in catching the man as private investigator Bruno Genko who is also supremely talented is also on the case. But Samantha’s case could be his last given that he intends to retire. He has lost all his passion for life and no longer wants to even live.