After a global success with his searing real-life account of the operations of the Comorra in Naples, Gomorrah, Saviano turns his hand to a novel covering much the same ground. As he states at the outset, the characters and the story are fictional, but the environment and the system that gives rise to them is all too real.

The protagonists in Savage Kiss (also known as The Piranhas) are teenagers determined to stamp their authority over their neighbourhood, and rise to be crime bosses worthy of fear and respect across Naples. Nicholas leads a small gang of thugs, with ambitions to be much more than that. He is also driven by the death of his brother and a burning desire for revenge.

Saviano's story is brutal and compelling, and I found that I was frequently reminding myself just how young these characters are, given the appalling actions they are prepared to undertake. If there is a flaw in the book, it is the use of nicknames for nearly all the characters, making it hard sometimes to sort out who was who, and to identify gang and family relationships. Still, that is no doubt as grounded in reality as the rest of the story is, sadly.

Not having read the previous 2 books in this author's saga, the world of Nicholas Fiorilla and his child gangs of Naples was new to me. Evocative and well written, this book takes you into their world. I will be looking for the previous books. Recommended reading.

I love the adaptations of Roberto Saviano's work - Gomorrah was a great movie, as was Suburra, and the TV show Gomorra is an incredible masterpiece. I can see a lot of those adaptations here but what works visually doesn't work as well on the page. All the characters kind of blur together - none stand out, none are memorable, they're all just gangsters - and the stories aren't clear or easy to follow so I rarely knew what was going on. This guy vs this guy vs this guy - Saviano's fine with dialogue but in terms of creating memorable characters that you can follow, or a clear narrative, Savage Kiss was a passionless dud for me.