What does a series of mysterious disappearances in Trioria, Liguria, have in common with a witch’s murder that happened more than four centuries before? Is it possible for two occurrences so chronologically distant to be related?

A real mystery on which police chief Caterina Ruggeri will have to shed light at all costs. She. will have to retrace a gloomy trail that really seems to have esoteric roots.

That is how “Esoteric Crimes” presents itself, as a novel that tastes like blood and has the color of the starless nights. It is a thrilling noir able to leave the readers breathless and making them feel that sinister tingling that one can perceive only by reading a good thriller.

A straightforward book that's not distant from reality. But at the same time, with its esoterism, it seems so far from it, as if it wants to escape it, bringing and dragging the reader in a world of fantasy, imagination, and … thrills!

Filippo Munaro

Prologue

Summer 1989

Border between Nepal and People’s Republic of China

When the Sherpa reached the umpteenth suspension bridge, they explained, in broken English, to the two women that have hired them in Kathmandu that they would never go beyond that point. They were not allowed to challenge their deities; they were too afraid. None of them has ever ventured beyond that bridge. Those, who in the past have dared to do so, never returned. If the women wanted to continue, they would have to do that at their own risk and peril. They would leave them the bare essentials to carry in their backpacks, some food, some chocolate bars, a camping stove, and the light two-seater igloo tent. They would wait for them for three days, and no more. The day was clear and, the rarefied air of almost four thousand meters of altitude gave the sky an intense blue color. The tops of the highest mountains on Earth challenged, with their snowy peaks, that same blue sky. Aurora and Larìs pulled out the warm Goretex windbreakers, which until then have protected them from the sudden blizzards, that they often have faced during the previous five days. Their purpose was certainly not to experience the thrill of an extreme vacation but to reach the Temple of Knowledge and Regeneration and to meet the Grand Patriarch. They would draw on the universal knowledge preserved in the temple and thus become members of the highest level of the sect. They already knew that from that point on, they would have to proceed alone, relying on their intuition and their powers. If they failed, if they went the wrong way, it would be impossible for them to save themselves. They would only find death in those mountains. Aurora paid the agreed-upon to the Sherpa chief, telling him that if he wanted, he could leave immediately. But the man with the Asian features, who held the reins of a lama, shook his head and repeated: «Three days.»

He warmed a strong tea for the two women and dismissed them, waving them goodbye. The old woman and her young friend hoisted their backpacks and ventured onto the bridge, suspended over an abyss of at least eight hundred meters high.

Chapter 1

Caterina Ruggeri

The voice of the plane’s pilot in command who warned the passengers of the now imminent landing brought me back to reality. Ancona is just an hour flight from Genoa, but my mind has been engaged in a whirlwind of thoughts. The events of the past few days have brought my life to a turning point. I thought about my past and my future. Now I had an important position, I had been appointed police chief in Imperia, and I never thought that this appointment would come so soon. Of course, I’ve spent exciting years as head of the Dogs’ Unit of the State Police at the Raffaello Sanzio airport in Ancona. I had had the opportunity to achieve what I have always liked from an early age: work with police dogs and train them, from drug-sniffing dogs to rescue from rubble dogs, from anti-riot dogs to the so-called molecular ones, that is those dogs that are suited for the research of trails and missing people. On the other hand, besides being engaged in a job that I liked very much, I also had the time to devote myself to studying and graduating in Law. I specialized in Criminology and hoped for the desired career advancement.

I would certainly never abandon my passion for dogs. That passion has been passed down to me by my veterinary cousin, Stefano, now fifty years

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue

Chapter 1