João Tordo - Águas Passadas

For thirteen days in January 2019, the rain falls mercilessly on Lisbon. It is then that the first victim appears on Assentiz beach: a fifteen-year-old girl washed ashore. Her body bears the marks of sophisticated cruelty. The first agent on the scene is Pilar Benamor, a PSP sub-commissioner whose courage and commitment to uncovering the truth conceal painful secrets.

The young victim is Charlie, the daughter of an English businessman, but soon the victim of a second brutal crime—a seventeen-year-old boy—appears in the Monsanto forest, in indescribable conditions. These two premature and violent deaths pave the way for an investigation that will expose Portuguese high society and the criminal underworld.

Throughout that inclement winter month, Pilar forges her own path in the investigation, against all odds and with the help of Cicero, a mysterious hermit.

Disobeying orders and risking her own life, she will delve into the dark and shadowy world of a psychopath, while battling the ghosts she has carried for a long time: a police officer father who died in the line of duty, an addiction that consumes her, and her vulnerability in a male-dominated world.

After his debut in the genre with *The Night the Summer Ended*, João Tordo returns with a fast-paced and delicately sensitive thriller that goes to the heart of our worst fears.