The power that exists but cannot be seen. Outgoing "The hand of Orpheus"Alan Friedman’s first novel

There is a power that cannot be seen. It never appears in the headlines. He doesn’t answer to anyone. Alexander Grayson met him. He tried to put it behind him. He didn’t succeed. “The Hand of Orpheus”Alex Grayson’s first adventure, is an explosive international intrigue between history, finance and politics, a thriller that keeps you in suspense until the last page, a novel about power written by those who have observed and told that power up close. “The Hand of Orpheus” (publisher Baldini and Castoldi)out in bookstores on October 13th, is also the first novel by Alan Friedmanone of the few international journalists who have reported on the mechanisms of global power from the inside.

He wrote for the “Financial Times”, the “International Herald Tribune”, “New York Times” and the “Wall Street Journal” and was the author of numerous books on politics, finance and power, including the biographies of Gianni Agnelli and Silvio Berlusconi, some of which were translated abroad and adapted by Netflix.

The plot: Alexander Grayson lives apart in the Tuscan hills, after a dazzling career that took him to the heart of the halls of power: the Delta Force, the CIA, up to the White House. He has changed his life, he is one of the most authoritative international journalists, but a phone call reopens a door he thought he had closed behind him forever. Just one word, Orpheus, is enough to take Alex back to forty years earlier.

Behind that name, he had discovered the existence of a clandestine network, an invisible hand capable of insinuating itself into governments, secret services, large banks and military systems throughout the world, bending them to its own interests without leaving any traces. He had sworn never to talk about it again, but someone has decided that his silence is not enough now. When the past comes back to look for him, inconvenient witnesses begin to disappear, old compromising documents suddenly resurface, Alex understands that he has no choice, one cannot leave that world without permission.

From the corridors of Washington to the banks of Zurich, from Roman palaces to the Russian secret services, he is sucked into a global game between encrypted accounts, top secret dossiers and arms trafficking. A deadly game in which whoever speaks pays, and whoever is no longer useful is eliminated. Because Orpheus is everywhere, and has his rules.