This is the Guardian.

Hello, my name is Tobias Jones. I'm the author of The Murder That Is Obsessed Italy.

So this was a case in which a 13-year-old girl went missing in the North of Italy in Bergamo,

or near Bergamo, and the way in which the case was solved was extraordinary. It was the first time

really in which a DNA case was built by this investigative magistrate, Lu Titiari, Ruggeri,

and it's a long and complicated case. Sometimes with articles there's just one image that

makes you think this is an extraordinary story in the image that I had in my head. This is

obviously a murder case was the fact that a long deceased man had licked a postage stamp

and the DNA from that postage stamp solved the crime. And what I liked about it was, apart from

the obvious tragedy, was that the cast of characters were extraordinary. You have an investigator who is

a single woman who is a black belt at Karate who cut her teeth working in Sicily investigating the

mafia. And though with this sort of very experienced investigator called Giovanni Mocherino, who just

spent a lot of time up in the mountains talking to people and trying to understand and find out

who this bus driver might have had an affair with decades previously. This case with all the tragedy

and sadness of the individual murder, this case sort of took the covering off a section of Italian

society. You got a glimpse into what this conservative Catholic area of North Italy might have

been like in the 60s and 70s. And this is a country where divorce was only legalised in 1970.

So a lot of people who had unhappy marriages or suffered infidelities stayed together.

So it was almost like a case which allowed me to write a portrait of Italy through the ages.

Welcome to the Guardian Long Read, showcasing the best long-form journalism covering culture,

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guardian.com forward slash long-weed. The murder that has obsessed Italy by Tobias Jones.

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