Donato Carrisi Books in Order
See all of Donato Carrisi's books in order, with series reading guides, quick summaries, background on his thrillers, and simple tips on where to start.
Last updated: December 22, 2025
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Publication Order
12 books
The Whisperer's Game
by Donato Carrisi
2022
Mila Vasquez has quit the police and lives in isolation with her young daughter beside a lake. When a terrified call from a remote farmhouse ends in slaughter, she is drawn back into a case that echoes her past and feels like a deadly game.
La casa delle luci
by Donato Carrisi
2022
Disgraced and unsure of himself, Pietro Gerber agrees to help Eva, a ten‑year‑old who rarely leaves her hilltop house and talks to an invisible friend. Under hypnosis, a lost child’s voice emerges that knows far too much about Gerber’s own forgotten childhood.
La casa senza ricordi
by Donato Carrisi
2021
After twelve‑year‑old Nico is found in a forest with no memory and an eerie calm, Pietro Gerber is called to break through the boy’s silence. Hypnosis unlocks a story spoken in another’s voice, dragging Gerber into a maze of lies and endangered lives.
Io sono l'abisso
by Donato Carrisi
2020
On the bleak shores of Lake Como, a lonely garbage collector uses what he learns from people’s trash to target abusers. When he saves a suicidal girl with a streak of purple hair, and a relentless woman starts tracking a killer of blond women, three damaged lives collide.
La casa delle voci
by Donato Carrisi
2019
Pietro Gerber, a child hypnotist in Florence, is asked to treat Hanna Hall, an adult haunted by memories of a strange, rule‑bound childhood and a possible killing. As sessions deepen, her shifting stories force Gerber to confront buried truths about his own past.
Into the Labyrinth
by Donato Carrisi
2017
Fifteen years after her abduction, Samantha Andretti staggers out of the dark and into a hospital, remembering only fragments of a maze‑like prison. While profiler Dr. Green mines her memories, terminally ill investigator Bruno Genko races to find the captor before time runs out.
Il maestro delle ombre
by Donato Carrisi
2016
During a planned blackout in storm‑lashed Rome, a series of murders unfolds in the darkness. Amnesiac penitenziere Marcus and investigator Sandra Vega must read faint signs in the chaos to stop a killer whose plans are bound up with Marcus’s lost memories.
The Girl in the Fog
by Donato Carrisi
2015
In an isolated Alpine village, devout teenager Anna Lou disappears on a foggy night. Celebrity detective Vogel arrives, manipulating the media and the town alike, but as suspicion falls on a local teacher the line between truth and spectacle starts to blur.
The Hunter of the Dark
by Donato Carrisi
2014
In Rome, a killer dubbed the Monster of Rome stalks couples and leaves ritualistic crime scenes that baffle police. Penitenziere priest Marcus and forensic analyst Sandra Vega join forces, using his uncanny eye for anomalies to expose a conspiracy around the murders.
The Vanished Ones
by Donato Carrisi
2013
At the elite Missing Persons bureau, Mila Vasquez tracks people the world has forgotten. When long‑vanished men and women suddenly return and unleash carefully staged violence, she must decode who turned them into sleepers and why an old case terrifies her colleagues.
The Lost Girls of Rome
by Donato Carrisi
2011
A forensic photographer grieving her husband’s suspicious death follows cryptic clues to Rome, where she collides with Marcus, an amnesiac priest‑investigator. Together they navigate a secret Vatican archive and a web of disappearances tied to a ruthless hunter of souls.
The Whisperer
by Donato Carrisi
2009
Six severed arms are unearthed in a forest, five from missing girls and one with no identity. Criminologist Goran Gavila and Mila Vasquez race to find the unknown child, confronting a manipulator who treats murder like a twisted puzzle.
Where should I start?
If you want to follow Mila Vasquez from the beginning: The Whisperer → The Vanished Ones → Into the Labyrinth → The Whisperer's Game
If you enjoy Vatican conspiracies and Rome noir: The Lost Girls of Rome → The Hunter of the Dark → Il maestro delle ombre
If psychological mind‑games are your thing: La casa delle voci → La casa senza ricordi → La casa delle luci
If you prefer stand‑alone thrillers tied to his films: The Girl in the Fog → Into the Labyrinth → Io sono l'abisso
Author bio
Donato Carrisi was born in 1973 in Martina Franca, a hill town in southern Italy, and grew up with one foot in small‑town life and the other in the stories he devoured. From early on he was more interested in motives than in alibis.
He went on to study law at the University of Bari, writing a thesis on a notorious Italian child killer and specialising in criminology and behavioural science. The work brought him close to real case files and expert investigators, and it left him with a deep curiosity about how people cross the line into violence.
Before he published a novel, Carrisi wrote for the stage and for Italian television. In the late 1990s he moved to Rome to work as a screenwriter on family dramas and crime series, learning how to build tension scene by scene and to leave just enough unsaid.
That training shows in his debut thriller The Whisperer, first published in 2009. The novel follows criminologist Goran Gavila and missing‑persons specialist Mila Vasquez as they investigate a devastating series of child abductions. The book found readers far beyond Italy, won the Premio Bancarella and other prizes, and opened the door to an international audience.
Rather than writing disconnected stand‑alones, Carrisi has built overlapping cycles of stories. The Mila Vasquez books push a solitary missing‑persons detective into confrontations with returned sleepers and manipulators who treat crime like a game. The Marcus and Sandra novels explore a hidden Vatican order of penitenzieri, priests trained to read tiny anomalies in the world as signs of evil. With Pietro Gerber, the Florence‑based hypnotist sometimes called the addormentatore di bambini, he turns inward, using therapy sessions to peel back layers of memory and self‑deception.
A handful of titles are especially well known to English‑language readers. The Lost Girls of Rome weaves together a grieving forensic photographer, an amnesiac priest and a secret archive of sins hidden in Rome. The Girl in the Fog moves to a fog‑bound Alpine village, where a missing teenager and a media‑savvy detective turn an investigation into a public spectacle; Carrisi later directed the film adaptation and received Italy’s David di Donatello award for best debut director. Into the Labyrinth and Io sono l'abisso push even further into psychological territory, following captives, hunters and damaged survivors through physical and mental mazes.
Across these books, certain themes repeat. Carrisi is drawn to missing people, cold cases, ambiguous institutions and places where faith, law and media intersect. His background in criminology shows in the way he pays attention to interviews, paperwork and procedures, but he is just as interested in the moment when logic breaks and characters have to confront their own shadows.
Today he lives in Rome and divides his time between novels, screenplays and directing. His work has been translated into many languages and has sold millions of copies, yet he tends to describe himself simply as a storyteller who keeps asking why people do harm—and what it costs to stand against that harm.
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