擁有完美生活和正當職業的商務人士柏曼，被一名神秘男子襲擊而失去知覺，當他醒來時，後車廂裡多了一具刻意打扮過的女童殘屍。
一所幾近荒廢的修道院中，獨居的年輕金髮神父渾然不知，在修道院地下的洗衣間裡，有一名失去左臂的女童陳屍其中。
專屬於富豪居住的高級住宅區裡，平靜祥和的表面下，沒人知道牙醫可巴席的豪宅客廳裡，一具宛若洋娃娃的女童屍體正端坐沙發上。
六隻女童的左臂被埋藏在森林空地裡，排成了詭異的圈圈，這是如此可怕的手牽手轉圈遊戲，幾乎可以聽到她們空洞淒涼的吟唱歌聲……
年輕女警米拉因為童年時被綁架的經歷，使得如今的她成為偵辦兒童失蹤案的一流人材。一起連續女童失蹤案，將米拉帶至以戈蘭．卡維拉博士為首的專案團隊。然而，隨著線索一條條顯現，米拉和戈蘭同時意識到，原來六名失蹤的女童僅是這場魔鬼遊戲的小小提示，她們其實各自代表了某起不為人知、兇嫌企圖揭發的慘劇。
正當調查陷入膠著時，米拉卻察覺了卡維拉博士的異樣。在妻子無故離家後，卡維拉博士和兒子相依為命，但米拉卻在卡維拉家中發現，博士鍾愛的「兒子」，竟然是……
A gripping literary thriller and smash bestseller that has taken Italy, France, Germany and the UK by storm.
Six severed arms are discovered, arranged in a mysterious circle and buried in a clearing in the woods. Five of them appear to belong to missing girls between the ages of eight and eighteen. The sixth is yet to be identified. Worse still, the girls' bodies, alive or dead, are nowhere to be found.
Lead investigators Mila Vasquez, a celebrated profiler, and Goran Gavila, an eerily prescient criminologist, dive into the case. They're confident they've got the right suspect in their sights until they discover no link between him and any of the kidnappings except the first. The evidence in the case of the second missing child points in a vastly different direction, creating more questions than it answers.
Vasquez and Gavila begin to wonder if they've been brought in to take the fall in a near-hopeless case. Is it all coincidence? Or is a copycat criminal at work? Obsessed with a case that becomes more tangled and intense as they unravel the layers of evil, Gavila and Vasquez find that their lives are increasingly in each other's hands.
THE WHISPERER, as sensational a bestseller in Europe as the Stieg Larsson novels, is that rare creation: a thought-provoking, intelligent thriller that is also utterly unputdownable.
★本書原義大利文書名: IL SUGGERITORE
★本書中譯版《惡魔呢喃而來》由春天出版社出版。
作者簡介
多那托．卡瑞西 Donato Carrisi
一九七三年出生於義大利馬丁納弗蘭卡（Martina Franca），主修法律與犯罪學。自一九九九年起開始從事電視編劇工作，歷經十年編劇生涯後，卡瑞西以《惡魔呢喃而來》初試啼聲。原本默默無名的他旋即颳起出版旋風，本書出版後短短數月內於義大利銷售突破二十二萬冊，不但贏得媒體及讀者一致壓倒性的好評，更獲頒義大利著名的邦卡瑞拉（Bancarella）獎（由當地最具權威的書店公會每年依據讀者評價及銷售量遴選）及卡馬約雷（Camaiore）獎。
這股「多那托熱潮」隨即席捲全球，陸續售出二十二國版權，橫掃英、德、法等國暢銷榜，於英國上市期間更是供不應求，亞馬遜書店缺貨長達一個多月！成為繼《龍紋身的女孩》後又一席捲全歐書市的大作。巴西版出版社甚至重金製作宣傳影片，並買下電影〈隔離島〉播映前廣告強打，至今這股熱潮仍持續在全球延燒中。
卡瑞西用了一年的時間構思《惡魔呢喃而來》，期間花費大量時間鑽研犯罪學及行為科學；本書情節規模宏大卻不嫌龐雜，贏得麥可．康納利、肯．弗雷特及威爾．拉凡德等名家齊聲推薦，The Bookseller.com網站譽為「有史以來最難猜測結局的小說之一」。
現居羅馬，持續創作中。
Donato Carrisi studied law and criminology before he began working as a writer for television. THE WHISPERER, Carrisi's first novel, won five international literary prizes, has been sold in
nearly twenty countries, and has been translated into languages as varied as French, Danish, Hebrew and Vietnamese. Carrisi lives in Rome.
