Blackout

By Gianluca Morozzi

Book Overview

"A spine-tingling novel that keeps you mesmerized from beginning to end."--InfiniteStorie

"Morozzi has a light touch. He has an uncanny ability to convey mood swings, excitement and plot twists with ever increasing velocity."--Gazzetta di Parma

"A chilling and claustrophobic thriller with an unpredictable ending. Morozzi joins the best in the genre."--LINUS

Bologna in August: unbearable heat, an empty city. Claudia is a young student in a hurry to return home from her work as a waitress and get out of the skimpy uniform she hates. Tomas is a young man on his way to elope to Amsterdam with his girlfriend, Francesca. Aldo is a husband and father with an uncanny resemblance to Elvis Presley, anxious to get to an apartment filled with guilty secrets. All three have an urgent need to be somewhere else. Instead, they are trapped in an elevator in a deserted building on a holiday weekend. They are like three wasps in an upturned glass . . . and one of the trio is a serial killer.

This dark, twist-packed psychological thriller in the style of Phonebooth has been adapted as a US film to be released in the fall of 2008, starring Amber Tamblyn and directed by cult Mexican auteur Rigoberto Casta eda.

Gianluca Morozzi was born in Bologna in 1971, where he lives today. He is well-known as a cutting-edge satirist and music critic, often compared to Nick Hornby and Ben Elton. Blackout is his first thriller.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 190473832X
• ISBN13: 9781904738329
• Release Date: November 2008
• Publisher: Bitter Lemon Press
• Length: 295 Pages
• Weight: 1.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Great fiction

This is one of the best mystery I've read for a long time. It's deliberate in pace and exciting in suspense. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good book to read and to collect.

tense psychological suspense

Everyone who can is escaping the summer heat of Bologna, Italy for the long August Bank Holiday weekend. Three people ride an elevator in a high rise apartment building in a city increasingly turning into a stone quarry as it empties of people. However, the elevator gets stuck trapping the trio inside between the eleventh and twelfth floor. In a somber greenish light that makes the BLACKOUT seem even eerier, the alarm fails and so does their mobiles. The two males struggle, but manage to open the door only to find a solid wall blocking the opening. There is no place to go except to wait for help or the elevator to suddenly work. Claudia works as an exotic dancer to pay her bills while going to school. Teenage Tomas is meeting his girlfriend Francesca in Amsterdam; as they have planned to elope. Aldo owns a club, believes music died when Elvis died, and finds passion as a serial killer. As the elevator's heat rises to unbearable levels and increasingly hope for help coming soon diminishes to zero, the trapped threesome begin lose it as tempers ignite and sadistic interchanges occur. Each of the trapped is a unique character with flaws that make them seen like real people spending unbearably heated time stuck in a closed environs with no hope for immediate rescue. The suspense grows as each becomes testier and angrier. Although an inane coda feels out of place and unnecessary, fans will enjoy this tense psychological suspense of three individuals sharing a horrific experience. Harriet Klausner