Zodiac is a detective story permeated with magic, in which we breathe and feela dimension beyond what we see and feel. A serial killer targets a wealthy familythat owns a banking group and kills some of its members, using an astrologicalritual scheme. At the sites of the murders he leaves messages taken from the cen-turies of Nostradamus, written in the handwriting of a man who had died manyyears before and signing himself with the symbol of the zodiac. The story beginswith the arrival in Turin of Ester, called urgently from the United States by herfather Gabriele Santandrea, who has received a threatening message from thekiller and wants to recognise his daughter to avert any danger. This will not be thecase. On the day of her 70th birthday, Gabriele organises a party at which hehas decided to present and recognise his daughter in front of family and friends.This does not happen because the ceremony is interrupted by an accident: theyoungest grandson, Riccardo, is about to drown in the pool and is saved by thenewcomer Ester. Also during the reception, another niece, Barbara, disappears.Commissioner Paolo Donati is in charge of the investigation. It is not the first timehe has dealt with the Santandrea family, and he is greeted with much suspicion bythe members of the family. Donati had tried in the past to investigate their affairs,which we gradually discover are not very legal. The family hires a private investi-gator to keep tabs on our commissioner’s movements and to investigate what soonturns out to be Barbara’s murder. To further entangle the story, the bank owned bythe Santandreas is the target of bloody robberies of its armoured trucks. Ester isimmediately included in the likely suspects, because she is strangely linked to everymurder that takes place in the story. Our commissioner, although unconvinced ofthe girl’s guilt, must act according to the law and must above all obey superiororders. Soon, however, he falls in love with Ester and is reciprocated, albeit in-termittently. In addition to Gabriele Santandrea, Ester herself receives messagessigned by Zodiaco (the serial killer) but, unlike her father, she denounces the factto the commissioner who, through a calligraphic expertise, will clear the girl ofsuspicion. Ester is haunted by visions in which she sees the killer’s criminal actionssubjectively, as if she herself were acting, and it is also through these that the com-missioner succeeds in developing the investigation. In the meantime, the murderscontinue and a false lead is also introduced; the private investigator hired by theSantandrea family is unceremoniously dismissed and, out of revenge and hungerfor money, decides to pretend to be a serial killer, misleading the police. PaoloDonati realises that there must be a link between the van robberies and the actionsof the Zodiac and, playing cunningly, uses one of his informants and manages toget to the organisation of the robberies and stop the private investigator but notthe serial killer. The search for the killer will also lead Donati and Ester to discoverwhat really lies behind the power and respectability of the Santandrea family. Ourprotagonists will have to unravel a dense web of intrigue and false suspicions,which will lead them into the killer’s dark mental labyrinths
