Inside the Central Intelligence Agency, it came to be known as “The Italian Job,” a botched operation in 2003 that snatched a radical cleric off a Milan street in broad daylight and spirited him to Egypt, where he says he endured months of torture at the hands of his Egyptian jailers.

The C.I.A. operatives had successfully nabbed their quarry — Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar — but they made a number of dizzyingly stupid decisions while in Italy. They spoke on commercial cellphones, used traceable toll scanners to breeze down highways in the getaway van, checked into ritzy hotels using the addresses of post office boxes located near C.I.A. headquarters and even gave the hotels frequent flier numbers so they could earn miles during their stay in Milan. The missteps left a lengthy evidence trail for Italian prosecutors, and 23 Americans were ultimately convicted on kidnapping charges after being tried in absentia.

Italian and American journalists have already unearthed many details of the case, and others came out during the trial. Yet a more thorough treatment has been needed to resolve a number of mysteries.

Steve Hendricks, the author of “The Unquiet Grave: The FBI and the Struggle for the Soul of Indian Country,” has gone part of the way in “A Kidnapping in Milan,” a generally fast-paced account of the episode. Hendricks is particularly strong in tracing Abu Omar’s roots in the jihadist world of the Middle East and his travels to Pakistan, Albania and eventually the rundown fringes of Milan. When Abu Omar arrived in Italy, he was just one among a flood of immigrants who had come to work in factories churning out Armani suits and Prada shoes.