Loro

About This Audiobook

*Loro* isn’t just another serial killer thriller—it’s a high-stakes psychological chess match where the board is Rome itself. Maxime Chattam ditches the tired lone-wolf killer trope and drops you into a nightmare where multiple predators hunt the same streets, their methods clashing, their motives intertwining. The tension isn’t just in the kills but in the eerie synchronicity: Are they copying each other? Collaborating? Or is something far more sinister orchestrating the chaos? This isn’t a whodunit—it’s a *whodunits*, plural, and the answer will leave you questioning every shadow.

Ilaria Egitto’s narration is a masterclass in controlled dread. Her voice—cool but never detached—mirrors the book’s unsettling balance between clinical procedure and visceral horror. She doesn’t shout; she *lingers*, letting Chattam’s razor-sharp dialogue and Rome’s oppressive atmosphere seep under your skin. The audiobook’s production leans into this with minimalist soundscapes (a distant siren, a footstep echoing in a piazza) that make the city feel like a living accomplice. If you’re tired of thrillers that telegraph their twists, *Loro* plays dirty: it misdirects with geography, not just plot, using Rome’s labyrinthine streets as a weapon."

"review": "I’ll admit, I rolled my eyes when I saw *another* serial killer book—but *Loro* gutted my cynicism in the first three chapters. Chattam’s real genius isn’t the body count (though it’s brutal) but how he weaponizes *space*. Rome isn’t just a backdrop; it’s a character with its own secrets, from the catacombs’ claustrophobic dark to the Trastevere alleys where a scream could be a lover’s quarrel or a death rattle. The audiobook amplifies this with Ilaria Egitto’s performance, which is *uncannily* precise. She doesn’t just read the detective’s exhaustion—you *hear* the coffee he’s chugging, the nicotine rasp in his voice. Her pacing is deliberate, almost lazy, until a reveal hits, and then she *snaps* into urgency. It’s a risky choice, but it pays off, making the quiet moments feel like loaded guns.

That said, the middle act drags slightly under the weight of its own ambition. Chattam juggles so many killers and red herrings that even the most attentive listener might lose track of a subplot or two (the art forger’s thread, while clever, feels tacked on). And while Egitto’s Italian pronunciation is impeccable, her male voices occasionally blur together—less of an issue in dialogue-heavy scenes but noticeable in monologues. Still, the finale is worth the slog: a twist that doesn’t just recontextualize the kills but the *city* itself. If you love thrillers that double as travelogues of the macabre—where the horror isn’t just in the bodies but in the cobblestones they’re found on—*Loro* will haunt your next trip to Rome (or your next walk home alone).