1945, Lake Como. Mussolini and his mistress are captured by local partisans
and shot in a summary execution. The precise circumstances of Il
Duceâe(tm)s death remain shrouded in confusion and controversy. 1992,
Milan. Colonna, a depressed writer picking up hack work, is offered a fee
he canâe(tm)t refuse to ghost-write a memoir. His subject: a fledgling
newspaper, which happens to be financed by a powerful media magnate. As
Colonna gets to know the team of journalists, he learns the paranoid
theories of Braggadocio who is convinced that Mussoliniâe(tm)s corpse was a
body-double and part of a wider Fascist plot. Itâe(tm)s the scoop he
desperately needs. The evidence? Heâe(tm)s working on it. Colonna is
sceptical. But when a body is found, stabbed to death in a back alley and
the paper is shut down, even he is jolted out of his complacency. Fuelled
by media hoaxes, Mafiosi, love, gossip and murder, NUMERO ZERO reverberates
with the clash of the cynical forces that have shaped Italy since the last
days of World War II. This gripping story from the author of THE NAME OF
THE ROSE is told with all the power of a master storyteller.