The sudden death of the mother, killed by someone who has no name or face. A discovery of the father, made many years before, but kept hidden for a mysterious reason. The secret of a man who lived a millennium ago, still never revealed.

The ingredients of "The showstone" are the right ones for a good start. Let's start with the writing and style, the classic one that Glenn Cooper uses in his books. An often concise narrative, aimed at the facts, with some focus on the characters. It's one of those types of writing that makes it easier to follow the story. The downside of this feature is perhaps the lack of marked originality in the descriptions, but each author has his own fingerprint, and that is Cooper's.

The plot is all in all pleasant, but the novel didn't excite me so much. Usually, in Glenn Cooper's books there is an element to which I can attribute a very fascinating esoteric value and which makes it curious to understand how it can intertwine with a plot that usually ends in the intrigues of everyday life, despite the apparent fantasy-thriller beginning. In this book, I felt the lack of that extra push that normally tickles my curiosity, and this had a lot of impact on the engagement that the plot failed to achieve. I still consider it a good novel, but not up to the previous ones in the Cal Donovan series (a series that doesn't reflect a common plot but has only a few protagonists in common).