This book gave me goose bumps and I have also felt shivers along my spine during the reading. I am reviewing a book titled The Silence of the Wave. I read the Italian edition titled Il silenzio dell’onda.This fictional work has been written by the Italian famous writer Giarnico Carofiglio. This is a bestselling author with his books translated in over 20 languages all over the world.
The Silence of the wave tells about another unforgettable Carofiglio’s character, namely Roberto Marìas, a partially retired policeman who every Monday and Thursday goes to a psychiatrist to heal a severe mental disorder due to his job.
In the past, in fact, Roberto worked as an undercover officer in charge of hunting dangerous criminals, drug smugglers and mafia bosses. During this task, Roberto became a friend of criminals and pretended to be like them, but after a certain moment, Roberto has had difficulties to keep this role because he realized how much ugly and nasty the world is. Roberto, indeed, saw many awful things while he worked as an undercover officer: fat and smelly drug traffickers accustomed to rape little girls during disgusting parties along with their friends, killers that to discharge their weapons, shot an entire family of faithful dogs and at last, a love story with the sweet daughter of a Mexican mafia boss, interrupted because Roberto had to come back to his normal work without to reveal his true identity.
After these awful vicissitudes, the life of Roberto falls apart. One day, he is found out by one of his colleagues, in the office, with a gun pointed into the mouth, while he is about to commit suicide. That same day, Roberto was not fired, but put aside, and forced to go to a psychiatrist to heal a depression caused by the stress of his job. A hard job, really, where Roberto had to be another man, play a false role, appear and disappear like a ghost, betray his friends , lie to his women up to be unable to distinguish the borders between good and evil.
But during his healing walk, Roberto will discover a new chance to redemption and salvation and all this happens when he meets Emma, a young woman who is attending the same psychiatrist to heal a serious guilt feeling. And through this new friendship and the long walks around Rome in the night, Roberto discovers back the pleasure to resume living.
I am very sorry if I dedicated much room to the plot of the book, but it was to calm down the feeling I am still keeping in my heart after reading. I must also confess I cried while I came across the hardest chapters of the story. A fiction, surely, but strongly rooted in reality, because the book is also an extraordinary account of the life of the undercover officers and secret agents. Always forced to work on the razor’s edge, to escape in case of risk and act suddenly to arrest those who some minutes first believe to be their friends.
The character of this book describes life and feelings of many of these officers, sometimes forced to witness untold crimes up to arrive in a no exit world. Once again, an extraordinary book and an extraordinary and unforgettable character that confirms author Giarnico Carofiglio as the best novelist of contemporary literature.
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Rosalba Mancuso is the journalist, born in Sicily, who founded three online magazines in English. On Advicebooks Book Reviews, Rosalba shows her great passion for books, helping readers and book lovers choose and buy the best books she read and reviewed. She also worked as a contributor to print and online magazines and as a bilingual Italian-English writer. Here, Rosalba also offers room to authors and publishers who want to get their books reviewed through the voice of an avid reader like her. You must also know that this book review magazine lives thanks to your help. Rosalba, in fact, earns a small commission, with no cost for you, when you buy books through the affiliate links you find in her book reviews. This book review magazine is also funded by services of editorial reviews and book press releases.
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