FUORI ORARIO

A visceral, taut, and cinematic noir set in the dark heart of Milan's underground network, where an ex-cop haunted by grief is pulled into a descent into crime, and perhaps, a shot at redemption.

Roberto Randazzo, known as "il Randagio" ("the Stray"), is a haunted figure marked by devastating loss: the sole survivor of an accident that cost him everything. He has fled from Cagliari to reinvent himself in Milanfirst working as a debt collector for a mob boss, and now serving as a vigilante for MMS, the notorious private security agency overseeing Italy's largest transit system. When Randazzo begins investigating a racially motivated assault in a suburban station, he is drawn into a spiral of violence, ideology, and personal revengedeep underground, where the line between victims and perpetrators becomes dangerously blurred.



There is a parallel city hidden in the belly of Milan: over a hundred kilometers of tunnels, stations, neon lights and shadows, a subterranean world crossed every day by a million and a half people. This is where Roberto Randazzo moves: an ex-cop with a once promising life, now an alcoholic haunted by tragedy and reduced to working for Milano Metro Security. He drifts like a wounded animal through the subway's nocturnal underworld of cheap bars, forgotten homeless men and restless gangs. When an old acquaintance lures him into planning a heist, and a homeless man is murdered above the Porta Venezia station, Roberto finds himself caught in a spiral of violence and despair. Then he meets Talia, a cultured Jewish woman. She hires him as a bodyguard for her nephew, who wears a kippah and risks becoming a target. These are the days of pro-Pal demonstrations, and Milan is gripped by an undercurrent of tension. Against all odds, Talia sees in Roberto a spark of humanity and a pain that mirrors her own. He, in turn, longs for meaning or at least for a truce. And perhaps, for the first time, he glimpses a path other than the abyss Among the most talented rising voices in Italian crime fiction, Lorenzo Scano offers a raw and visceral portrait of a metropolis in turmoil.

Among the most talented rising voices in Italian crime fiction, Lorenzo Scano offers a raw and visceral portrait of a metropolis in turmoil. Fuori orario is a tense, contemporary novel about survival, prejudice and redemption against all odds, written with grit, urgency, and cinematic intensity.

Lorenzo Scano (born in 1993) has been a bookseller, boxer, newsagent, nightclub bouncer, and many other things.
With Nero Rizzoli he published Via libera (2021, shortlisted for Premio Scerbanenco) e Una mattina come questa (2024).