THE WICKED

The most feared criminal in Italy blackmails a woman into working for him.

Elio Marino is known throughout Turin’s criminal underworld as “The Wicked” because if he judges someone to be a sinner, he will kill them and everyone in their bloodline as punishment. Zahra Faizan is the head of a small, scrappy crew of thieves that call themselves Street. They target and raid one of Elio’s vault houses, escaping with enough money to last for years. A furious Elio tracks them down. He shoots and tortures Zahra until she makes a desperate bargain: In exchange for their lives, Zahra and the four other members of Street will work as permanent indentured servants for Elio. From this beginning, the book spins off a series of scenes that are so loosely interconnected that it reads less like a novel than a series of vignettes with characters who happen to have the same names: Now Zahra and Elio are playing chess; now Elio is drowning Zahra in a pool; now Elio and Zahra are in a shootout and have to save each other; now Elio and Zahra are getting high and making out. Although it’s billed as a romance, Zahra is in a casual relationship with Devil, another member of Street and Elio’s long-lost brother, for most of the book. Dramatic biographical details and storylines are introduced for both Elio and Zahra to justify their feelings or behavior, but this characterization is inconsistent and fractured. Once the scene is over, that information about the character might disappear for hundreds of pages, or never appear again. There is no chemistry or spark between Elio and Zahra, just strange, wooden dialogue and a cliffhanger ending.

An inexplicable, aimless, and troubling reading experience.