Heavy
by Antonio Biggio
466 pages
EAN: 9791281297265
Spirito Libero Editions
16.90 Euros
After Eddie Must Die (review here) e Eddie’s Tomb (review here), both from 2021, the saga maideniana set up by Antonio Biggio reaches its third and final chapter and does so through a beast of more than 450 pages.
Intricate beyond belief, with the group perpetually in the background Harry (Steve Harrisbassist and leader of Iron Maiden), The Enigma of the Three Eddiesthis is the title of the work released a few weeks ago that sees the light for the faithful Spirito Libero Editions.
We are in 1984, the year in which the British Iron Maiden released the sparkler Powerslave, an album full of classics, starting from the title track. The situation at European and even global level is not among the calmest, politically and the fact that Irons have received an official invitation to open their mammoth World Slavery Tour in Warsaw, Poland, a nation under the domination of the Soviet bloc, the first heavy metal band in history to cross the Iron Curtain, certainly does not help to ease the tension between the Superpowers, but not only that.
Evidently there is a bigger game being played out there than even the Iron Maiden who, in some ways unconsciously, find themselves protagonists of an international intrigue with sprawling plots. The Western way of life increasingly attracts especially young people who grew up under the dictates of the Warsaw Pact, who are restricted by the Party’s hegemony. The sirens coming from the West are becoming more insistent day by day and the fact that a group of long-haired Englishmen wedge themselves inside a System that until then was impenetrable from the outside certainly doesn’t make the more traditionalist Russian big-heads jump for joy. and conservatives, who do everything in their power to stop the band and the initiative.
Apparently separated from these events are the English inspector Andrew Briggs – the true protagonist of Biggio’s works – and the fascinating American agent Rebecca Ward, who starting from a formally simple murder committed in Yorkshire of a man whose only guilt is that of getting a tattoo of the Maiden mascot Eddie on their own bodies they are sucked into the bowels of a much larger global conspiracy.
The subtle fil rouge that links the different events, which will then slowly become fatally connected to each other, is made up of a poisonous lump resulting from about-faces, betrayals, envy, wiretaps, misdirections, corruption, kidnappings, torture, incarcerations and obviously someone there leaves the skin. All perfectly in line with the perfidy that animated the very tense relations between the Soviet bloc of the USSR – of which the GDR was titled emanation – and the Western world, USA in the lead, with the revolutionary regurgitations of a Gorbachev standing out on the horizon in the middle.
Naughty acts and dirty games are common not only at the level of the secret services, but also play a major role in the friendly rooms – euphemism – of the various forms of the English police forces, while on the scene the sinister outline of a disturbing figure materializes Postmansilent bringer of death, but inevitably without his scooter, his uniform, his reassuring military cap and his bag containing the correspondence to be delivered…
Stefano “Steven Rich” Ricetti
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