Review: The Cold Summer by Gianrico Carofiglio tr. Howard Curtis

The Cold Summer by Gianrico Carofiglio translated by Howard Curtis, September 2018, 276 pages, Bitter Lemon Press, ISBN: 1912242036

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here and here.)

“… You’re close to the shit, too, like all of us. But you never get it on you. I don’t know how else to put it. It’s like you had some kind of power …
Maybe it annoys me because I admire you, or vice versa. Am I talking crap?”
“No, you’re making perfect sense.”

1992, Bari, Southern Italy, summer-time.
Marshal Pietro Fenoglio sits in his favourite cafe so engrossed in the local newspaper editor’s advice to the police on handling a Mafia flare-up that he doesn’t immediately notice the young man trying to rob the cashier. When he does – he quickly overcomes the would-be robber and pins him to the floor. The cafe unfreezes and the carabinieri are called. Two men walk in and demand Fenoglio hands over the thief. They are not carabinieri. They say they will teach the thief a lesson. Fenoglio promises the men a lengthy stay at the police station if they don’t clear off – which they do. Then he pays for his breakfast pastry despite the owner’s objections and accompanies the young robber to the police station. Frankly, Fenoglio is tempted to let him go. He likes him, believes that this was, as he says, his first robbery attempt. But there are rules. He tells the young man to plea bargain and in all likelihood he will get a suspended sentence. The arrestee is grateful, telling Fenoglio that if he ever needs help he will find him hanging out near the Petruzzelli theatre. The mention of the theatre sours Fenoglio. It had been one of the things he had liked about Bari: concerts, an opera. But someone torched the theatre a few months ago. Now it’s just a burnt-out shell.

Captain Valente, new boss, fresh from Rome, summons Fenoglio to his office and asks him to bring him up to speed on the local mafia fight. Fenoglio obliges. A few weeks ago Shorty, a member of local crime boss Grimaldi's gang, was murdered. Since then several high profile Grimaldi gang members have disappeared or been killed. Valente assumes it’s a rival gang but Fenoglio points out that no-one outside the group has been killed. This looks more like battles within the gang itself.

Over a solitary lunch in a local trattoria, Fenoglio thinks about his current equally solitary life; his recent separation from Serena. The cause? His obsession with work perhaps but truly he thinks it’s because he can’t have children. Fenoglio knows that he has never been any good at showing his feelings. He feels them, but... Would Serena have a child with someone else? Could he stand that?

Back at the office they receive a tip-off. Grimaldi’s son has been kidnapped. Using a traffic violation as cover, Fenoglio questions one of Grimaldi’s associates known as the Accountant. Apparently the boy disappeared on the way to school a couple of days ago. The Accountant confirms there has been a ransom demand but cannot say whether it was paid or not. Fenoglio’s musings over the delicate procedure of demanding the appearance of a local Mafia boss and his wife at a police station are interrupted by news of a shoot-out in a neighbouring village. These incidents and killings are escalating in some kind of silent bubble, corroborating Fenoglio’s belief in an internal gang war. What is more the ransom, it seems, has been paid but the boy hasn’t been returned. They are interviewing the woman who delivered the ransom money when they get the grimmest news of all; the boy’s body has been found at the bottom of an isolated well. He has been dead for days…

Celebrated Italian crime writer, anti-Mafia prosecutor and one-time senator, Gianrico Carofiglio, embarks on a new series with THE COLD SUMMER (translated here by experienced Carofiglio translator Howard Curtis). It introduces Marshal Pietro Fenoglio of the Bari Carabinieri: solitary, thoughtful, reserved, a Northerner from Turin, carabiniere for twenty years and a man of principle. Events revolve around the tragic death of a kidnapped child and are set against the back-drop of real-life events – the Mafia assassinations of two high-profile anti-Mafia judges in 1992. In some parts the writing blends the action of police procedural with the cool reportage of legal deposition. This last might sound tedious but the formal language of the deposition serves to both collapse time and to filter the savagery of the violent crime. And Carofiglio's description of the structure and ritual of the “Societa Nostra” is engrossing and absorbing; simultaneously grandiose and elaborate, they function to confirm a gang member’s loyalty and even the subservience of locals to the rule and composition of the “Family” – perhaps an ornate mirror of modern day urban gang culture. The characters are closely observed: Fenoglio’s complex, reticent personality offset by the almost brutal character of his colleague Pellecchia. Finally a mix of random and purposeful events (Carofiglio has said that: “… real world investigations and trials are much more ruled by chance than in films and novels.”) move this story to an eventual darker turn and protagonist.

Strongly recommended. I look forward to more.

Lynn Harvey, January 2019

Review: The Memory of Evil by Roberto Costantini tr. N S Thompson

The Memory of Evil by Roberto Costantini translated by N S Thompson, March 2016, 480 pages, riverrun, ISBN: 0857389408

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

2011, Zawiya, Libya.
Men awaiting execution are noosed to a row of poplar trees leading to the village’s burnt-out, shot-out school. The Berbers, or Amazighs, have been amongst the first to rebel against Gaddafi earlier in the year and now this Amazigh village has been captured by his troops. An armoured SUV draws up and an Arab man in his 60s gets out: civilian dress, dark glasses, part of his ear missing. In the dust of the hot desert wind, this man calls the tune for both Gaddafi’s troops and their white mercenary leader as he dictates the ingredients for a vile and cruel massacre that spares not a man, woman or child in Zawiya.

1962, Tripoli, Libya.
As the desert wind blows sand into the villa courtyard four boys, two Arab and two Italian, solemnly cut their wrists and share an oath of blood brotherhood. Sand and blood. For ever.

2011, Rome, Italy.
Commissario Michele Balistreri walks through early morning Rome, exercising his painful knee before spending the rest of the day, as he prefers, indoors. First an espresso in his favourite bar. The radio spills out the latest on the war in Libya and in particular a brutal massacre at Zawiya. Balistreri leaves and heads for the office. He doesn’t want to hear any more about that war. He wants the darkness of his office.

2011, Tripoli, Libya.
Linda Nardi stretches out on her hotel bed in the quiet of sunset before the night brings the roar of NATO jets. She remembers her closeness with Michele Balistreri five years ago. They had talked, ate, spent time together, without so much as a kiss but it had ended badly. She knows that she should be getting on with the job of reporting this war, the massacre – but what she really wants is to return to her orphans and hospitals in Central Africa. In the morning she will be boarding a plane to Nairobi but for now …
In the hotel bar she bumps into a Lebanese acquaintance from Nairobi. What brings him here? “War is manna from heaven to businessmen”, he says. She asks about the hospital contract in Nairobi. Yes, he won the construction contract: Kenyan accounting, Italian rules. But the investors are Swiss? Nothing is ever really Swiss. He goes on to hint at profitable dealings for a certain bank, God’s Bank, in the Vatican state.
Just then Linda notices a beautiful Western woman surrounded by an obviously Libyan Secret Service group crossing the bar. They are followed by an Arab in his 60s, deeply lined face, part of an ear missing. The Lebanese businessman pales.
Is that a business competitor? No. Have you heard what happened in Zawiya, Miss Nardi? They say that man was behind the death of General Younis … Suddenly her acquaintance remembers something he must attend to. Sick of both Libya and the war, Linda returns to her thoughts of Nairobi.

THE MEMORY OF EVIL is Roberto Costantini's final part of his Commissario Balistreri trilogy. By 2011 (the primary setting of THE MEMORY OF EVIL) bad boy Michele Balistreri, sworn childhood blood-brother of Ahmed, Karim and Nico in 1960s Libya is reaching the end of his career as Head of Rome's Murder Squad. He is a man well-versed on both sides of the criminal fence, in his 60s, exhausted, in ill health and approaching retirement. Although the story begins with journalist Linda Nardi’s investigation of corruption in Nairobi and the death of a beautiful young woman and her two year-old daughter on board a cruise ship off Elba, these crimes are counter played by Balistreri’s increasing obsession with the past, in particular the riddle of his mother’s death in Tripoli of 1969. Supposedly a suicide, Michele is convinced she was murdered. But which of the people he knew and loved back then had killed her?

My sense of Roberto Costantini's trilogy is that it is a work in its own right. So I have to ask if it is a problem not to have read its previous novels. Costantini keeps events clear and apparent in the timeline so the problem is unlikely to be that of missing important elements in the narrative. But as THE MEMORY OF EVIL’s narrative heat rises, its chapters come short and fast, referring back and forth between 2011 and 1960s Libya as seen through the eyes of different characters. This focusses and builds tension but it’s possible that the staccato changes may confuse a reader new to the trilogy.

Above all THE MEMORY OF EVIL is crime fiction. It encompasses violence and unlikeable characters doing unspeakable things, investigative journalism and police procedural, plot twists and suspense, skilful writing and translation. But I do recommend this “saga” of an influential Italian family and its circle set against the backdrop of events in twentieth century North Africa and Italy during the rise and fall of Gaddafi. These are times, places and points of view not often caught in crime fiction and Costantini’s writing of this story is authoritative.

Lynn Harvey, June 2018.

Review: A Cold Death by Antonio Manzini tr. Antony Shugaar

A Cold Death by Antonio Manzini translated by Antony Shugaar, August 2016, 320 pages, Paperback, Fourth Estate, ISBN: 0008124337

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

Friday, March 16th, Aosta, Northern Italy.
Rain, then snow, mountains swathed in cloud. A wind rattles the No Parking signs in Via Brocherel as Irina rounds the corner. Its icy slap doesn’t bother Belarus-born Irina. She is thinking about her Italian breakfast of coffee and brioche and how different it is from the barley gruel and muddy coffee back home. Her partner Ahmed won’t believe that her father sucks lumps of butter as a treat. She loves Ahmed, the Egyptian who smells of the apples he sells on his stall.

She reaches the apartment building (so unlike the block where she and Ahmed live with Ahmed’s sullen eighteen-year-old son Hilmi) and gets out her keys. The apartment door unlocks too easily, not double-locked. Irina calls out her employer’s name as she walks through to the sitting room which is a mess – with the remains of a meal, wine glasses, a slept-in blanket on the sofa. None of this is right. Gathering up the glasses, Irina walks through to the kitchen. Drawers and cupboards have been flung open, kitchen equipment and cutlery strewn everywhere. She rushes to the bedroom. It’s empty, the bed unmade. Turning quickly, she steps on a shattered cell phone. “Burglars!” she yells, falling badly in her struggle to get out of the apartment. She bangs on all of the neighbours’ doors in turn but gets no response. The street too seems deserted. Until she spots an elderly man with a tiny dog on a leash. She limps towards retired Warrant Officer Rastelli who stares at the dishevelled woman with the bloodied knee. Her mouth opens and closes and he switches his hearing aid back on; he always turns it off when he walks Flipper, the little mutt yaps all the time. The woman is distraught and yelling about burglars. Rastelli falls back on habit. He stands to attention and waits.

Deputy Police Chief Rocco Schiavone gets up with his alarm, opens the curtains and stares at the grey sky. No sun, no surprise. He sighs and begins his working day ritual of cell phone off, breakfast in the café, an early morning joint. Only then, will he turn his phone on and start the working day. There is a text from his girlfriend Nora. Which reminds him that today is her birthday and that the list of gifts she doesn’t want is long and specific. Rocco’s gloomy thoughts are interrupted by his assistant Caterina Rispoli. Amongst other things she says there are reports of drug dealing around the railway station. And Rocco has a brainwave which allows him to get rid of two birds with one stone. Two birds, two idiots: D’Intino and Deruta. He orders the pair to stake out the park near the station each night, starting straight away. Never mind that Deruta helps out his wife at her bakery at night – he’ll just have to help her during the day. With two liabilities off his hands, Rocco is just asking Caterina’s advice on a birthday gift for Nora when the news comes through of a burglary on Via Brocherel.

At the crime scene together with Officer Pieron, Rocco works the apartment’s lock open with his Swiss Army knife. Irina, the cleaning woman, says every room is a mess. Just one door remains closed, at the end of the hall. They open it. Darkness. A smell that tells Rocco that something is very wrong. He switches on the light which immediately shorts out. The room is pitch black again. But what he sees in that brief moment of light is enough for him to call the Medical Examiner. A woman hangs by a cord from the light hook, her head slumped onto her chest…

I was unsure about the writing as I began A COLD DEATH, the second Rocco Schiavone mystery to be translated into English. At first its descriptions seemed florid – but I can be a hard-boiled girl sometimes. And it was a short adjustment. I soon settled in, enjoying the pace and story-telling of this murder investigation hiding in the skirts of a suicide. The dialogue flows well; crackling and capturing that subtle thing – a tongue in cheek remark that we need to read as such. Perhaps Manzini’s skill with dialogue owes something to his career as an actor and director. The star is Schiavone himself. If you accept his profanities and fury, you can quickly get to like Rocco Schiavone. In Rome he grew up with the bad boys before becoming a successful policeman. Now he is exiled to the frozen wastes of Aosta, as he sees it, after his temper got the better of a well-connected suspect and his own career. He misses Rome, he hates the cold, and despite an eye for a pretty woman he will be forever “married” to his wife Marina, a dead woman with whom he talks in the privacy of his own home. And just to cap off his search for justice in A COLD DEATH, that well-connected suspect crops up again. An atmospheric, fast-paced read, this story has character and characters enough to keep you coming back for what I hope will be another slice of the series.

Lynn Harvey, February 2017

Review: Broken Chord by Margaret Moore

Broken Chord by Margaret Moore, April 2015, 344 pages, McNidder & Grace Crime, ISBN: 0857160826

Reviewed by Ewa Sherman.

BROKEN CHORD by Margaret Moore introduces State Prosecutor Jacopo Dragonetti known as Drago, in the first novel of the series, set in Tuscany, and one of the first titles published by the new M&G Crime imprint. Born in the UK, Margaret Moore has lived most of her adult life in Italy. She’s married to an Italian, has a large family and a keen eye for detail. The author weaves her extensive knowledge of all aspects of Italian everyday life: music, food, architecture and history into the novel’s setting, creating a vivid, memorable background.

Ursula von Bachmann has been brutally murdered in her own elegant villa on the outskirts of Lucca. A nouveau riche and a despot she has made many bad decisions in her life but it seems that the worst was to let her killer into her bedroom. Her three children by three different fathers, staying with her during the unbearably hot summer, are shocked by the violence of the attack. They suspect that Guido, their mother’s jilted fiancé and a lounge lizard gigolo of the purest water, is the killer. And so the youngest, Marianna, nearly 18, in a world of her own, an older Lapo, with a physical deformity, beautiful face and a cruel streak, and Tebaldo, a recovered drug addict, now a questionable pillar of his own family, cling to the hope that all will be sorted soon. Imprisoned in the villa, they eye each other with increasing mistrust and fear, becoming anxiously aware of their circumstances, the constant presence of faithful yet resentful servants and the echoes from the Second World War as well as the more recent past. With so many people inside and outside the family bearing grudges the situation becomes tense. The components of this complex case prey on the investigating magistrate Dragonetti’s mind during his trips between his ancestral own Palazzo in Florence, police station and von Bachmann’s villa. Things are not what they seem…

Against the backdrop of the sophisticated surroundings, under the unforgiving July sky a much darker toxic side appears to the superficially comfortable peaceful life. Following his own instincts and some false trails Drago unravels a private history of feuds and violence, and tales of a family rich in money but poor in love where jealousies, hatreds and passions run riot.

The opera-loving chain-smoking Drago is a stylish, astute yet empathetic Italian character. Although he reminds me of both Andrea Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano and Henning Mankell’s Kurt Wallander he is definitely a man in his own right and these comparisons are definitely favourable. He seems to have a fairly normal private life, with a sensible attitude to his own work and not many demons lurking in the background.

BROKEN CHORD, an elegant psychological exploration of a dysfunctional family in a fine tradition of crime mystery is a great read, and I will follow Drago’s investigations and musings in further instalments.

Ewa Sherman, September 2015

Review: The Root of All Evil by Roberto Costantini tr. N S Thompson

The Root of All Evil by Roberto Costantini translated by N S Thompson, April 2015, 688 pages, Quercus, ISBN: 085738936X

Reviewed by Lynn Harvey.
(Read more of Lynn's reviews for Euro Crime here.)

“A brotherhood of sand and blood. For ever.”

Prologue: Tripoli, Libya, 1958.
Three families – Libyan, American, Italian – sit watching the finale of the Sanremo Song Festival on a black and white television.
“Volare, oh, oh! Cantare, oh, oh, oh!”

Tripoli, 1962.
Gazing up at his grandfather's face in the darkness of the cinema, Michele asks about the gunfight on the screen. Grandfather Buseghin doesn't answer, he doesn't like gunfights – not since his son Toni, dressed in his new fascist uniform, was killed during the war.
The Buseghin-Balestreri family live ten kilometres outside Tripoli, in the villa built by Grandfather near his olive grove. Grandfather's daughter Italia, Michele’s mother, idolises both her dead brother and Mussolini: she spends her days smoking and reading Nietzsche, a glass of whisky by her side – much to husband Salvatore's disgust. Grandfather built a second villa next door and this is let to the Hunts, an American family. William Hunt works out of the nearby US base; his wife Marlene, beautiful and with ambitions to be in films before she met and married William, jogs. Their daughter Laura is two years younger than Michele and Michele loves her.
Two kilometres away Michele's best friends Ahmed and Karim live with their father Mohammed, sister Nadia, Mohammed's two wives and their two half-brothers. All are crammed into a wooden shack close to the olive grove and the stinking cesspit.

Home from the cinema trip, Michele straddles the villa's verandah railings waiting for his customary gunfight with Ahmed. Michele has a new twist, his own mock death; he has learned from the film that girls love a dead martyr. Laura takes some time studying Michele lying in the dust. “Bravo Mikey,” she says, “The winner always turns out to be hateful.”
Sunday: Michele and his brother Alberto enjoy an “American breakfast” at the Hunts after which Marlene invites them for a ride to the beach in her new Ferrari. Later a game of football with Ahmed and Karim and – after sunset – shooting doves whilst Ahmed skewers scorpions with his throwing knife. At the villa Michele's dog Jet is being examined by the vet; rabies, he will have to be put down. Michele, with his air gun, goes out to where the local feral dogs whine and howl but Ahmed is already there. He cuts the throat of the largest dog.
Monday: Michele tries to forestall his friend Nico's humiliation during “reading aloud” at school. The son of the local garage man, Nico smells of petrol, is the butt of the class's jokes and lisps. Their teacher, local parish priest Don Eugenio, knows that Michele, the son of the powerful Salvatore Balistreri is untouchable, so he punishes Nico instead, pulling his ear savagely and keeping them both back after class. He dismisses Michele and Nico's eyes plead as Michele leaves. That evening the quartet of friends, Michele, Ahmed, Karim and Nico, swear blood brotherhood and come up with a plan to protect Nico. They hide, camera ready, when the priest hears Nico's confession next day as arranged. Nico confesses that the four touched themselves. The priest kneels and demands that Nico demonstrate and when Nico drops his pants the boys jump out, photographing the surprised priest. We won't tell, they say, but we have photographs. Ahmed adds, “Touch my friend again and I'll slit your throat.” …

Roberto Costantini's THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL is the second part of his Commissioner Balistreri trilogy and covers two time periods: Michele Balistreri's youth in Libya during the 1960s, his family life, his relationship with friends Ahmed, Karim and Nico, the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 and the quartet's burgeoning criminal career. This part culminates in the brutal murder of Ahmed's sister Nadia, Gaddafi's coup and the expulsion of the Italian community. The second part is set in 1980s Rome with Balistreri a police commissioner. The rape and murder of a young South American student only 24 hours after her arrival in the city recalls the murder of Nadia for Balistreri. He becomes obsessed with the case, whilst at the same time committing to watching out for the daughter of his old boss as she enters the corrupt world of Italian TV. Once again Balistreri's past will surface to haunt him.

Costantini's writing, as presented in this translation by N S Thompson, is detailed but clear and action-based although things speed up in the final police procedural section. Balistreri, an egotistical misogynist and ex-Fascist, is an unlikeable hero but as Costantini himself says: “The truth does not necessarily come out of good people.” Costantini is an ex-engineer so thoroughness of structure is perhaps no surprise. He does not so much peel back the layers of an historical onion, as construct the entire onion before our very eyes. (“My wife was very upset because the house was full of flow charts,” he says of his preparation for the first part of the trilogy, THE DELIVERANCE OF EVIL.) Like Balistreri, Costantini was born in Libya. When asked in a Crime Thriller Fella interview why he set part of his novel there, Costantini replied that the events surrounding Gaddafi's rise to power were:
“fascinating, but are still not widely documented; and because Libya is a perfect example of a place wherein the values of the old world (loyalty and trust) were replaced in favour of the values of the new world (making a lot of money very quickly)”.
Perfect roots for a crime novel. Although part of a trilogy, this book works very well as a standalone novel. If you have a passion for modern political and social history told through exciting crime fiction, this is one for you. I certainly plan to revisit Costantini's writing.

Lynn Harvey, August 2015.

Review: Judges - Camilleri, Lucarelli & De Cataldo

Judges by Andrea Camilleri, Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo, translated by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne, May 2014, 165 pages, MacLehose Press, ISBN: 0857052977

JUDGES is a collection of three short stories from three of Italy's top crime writers. The collection was first published in Italian in 2011 and in all three stories, the judge is fighting against a corrupt establishment.

The first story is Andrea Camilleri's Judge Surra, which has been shortlisted for this year's CWA Short Story Dagger, and like his Montalbano series, is set in Sicily but around a hundred years earlier. This is an amusing tale of how the judge unwittingly brings down a mafia boss whilst discovering the local delicacy of cannoli pastries.

The second story is Carlo Lucarelli's The Bambina, set in Bologna in 1980 at a time when judges needed protection from the police. The judge in this case is a young woman, nick-named Bambina who is assigned an older policeman. She's prosecuting a fraud case and doesn't think she requires a bodyguard however she is soon proved wrong and she finds a different way of meting out justice.

The final story is Giancarlo De Cataldo's The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor, set in modern day and the main protagonist, Mandati, is a public prosecutor in a small town who is trying to bring down the mayor, a rival from childhood, and who has his fingers in all the financial pies. The mayor usually thwarts Mandati but will he this time?

Each story covers a similar theme but are all very different in approach and time-frame and the high standard does make you wish that more of Lucarelli's and De Cataldo's books were available in English. All three authors have recently had tv series shown in the UK: Montalbano, Inspector De Luca and Romanzo Criminale, so one can hope.

More short stories from these three authors can be read in the excellent anthology, CRIMINI.

The stories were translated respectively by Joseph Farrell, Alan Thawley and Eileen Horne.

TV News: Inspector De Luca on BBC Four

Inspector De Luca, based on the trilogy (Carte Blanche, The Damned Season and Via Delle Oche) by Carlo Lucarelli begins next Saturday, 22 March, at 9pm on BBC Four.

The first of the four episodes is Unauthorised Investigation which is based on a non- De Luca novel called Indagine non Autorizzata, with the following three episodes based on the De Luca books:

At the seaside resort of Riccione in 1938 the body of a young prostitute is found on a beach, not far from Mussolini's holiday residence. The local chief of police, terrified that the news may become public, attempts to draw the matter to a swift close by charging the woman's pimp with her murder, and earns praise from Il Duce in the process.

But Inspector De Luca, unconvinced that the case has been solved, continues to secretly investigate on his own. Set against the backdrop of sophisticated hotels and exclusive beach resorts in what was once considered to be the 'summer capital' of fascism, De Luca's investigation soon starts to involve aspiring politicians, high-ranking state functionaries, seductive countesses, anti-fascist journalists and some of Mussolini's own bodyguards.

Upcoming Italian Crime Fiction - Marco Vichi

I received a paperback proof of Death in August by Marco Vichi at the weekend. It's due out in June from Hodder & Stoughton. ( I mentioned it before when it was to be called Inspector Bordelli)

There are many reasons to be cheerful about it:

1) gorgeous cover
2) it's the first in the series which currently numbers four
3) it's actually quite short (not a 400 page opus like most of the Dagger submissions!) and contains a sampler of book two which is due out in January 2012.
and most excitingly:
4) it's translated by Stephen Sartarelli (of Camilleri fame) and has some of his notes at the back.

Florence, summer 1963. Inspector Bordelli is one of the few policemen left in the deserted city. He spends his days on routine work, and his nights tormented by the heat and mosquitoes. Suddenly one night, a telephone call gives him a new sense of purpose: the suspected death of a wealthy Signora. Bordelli rushes to her hilltop villa, and picks the locks. The old woman is lying on her bed - apparently killed by an asthma attack, though her medicine has been left untouched. With the help of his young protege, the victim's eccentric brother, and a semi-retired petty thief, the inspector begins a murder investigation. Each suspect has a solid alibi, but there is something that doesn't quite add up ...

These Dark Things

Thanks to Netgalley (an excellent purveyor of e-galleys), I've discovered another author writing crime fiction set in Italy. Jan Merete Weiss, has begun a series set in Naples starring Captain Natalia Monte of the Carabinieri. The first book, These Dark Things will be published by Soho Crime in May (US) and July (UK):

When a beautiful college student is found murdered in the catacombs beneath a monastery, Captain Natalia Monte of the Carabinieri is assigned to investigate. Could the killer be a professor the student had been sleeping with? A blind monk who loved her? Or perhaps a member of the brutal Napali criminal organization, the Camorra? As Natalia pursues her investigation, the crime families of Naples go to war over garbage-hauling contracts; and all across the city heaps of trash pile up, uncollected. When one of Natalia's childhood friends is caught up in the violence, her loyalties are tested, and each move she makes threatens how own life and the lives of those she loves.

ps to Translated Delights in 2011

The other day I posted a few highlights of 2011 in terms of translated crime. The Hodder & Stoughton catalogue arrived today and we have another Italian author to add to the list.

Marco Vichi's first Inspector Bordelli book, called Inspector Bordelli, will be published in June 2011. According to the promotional material: "Inspector Bordelli is Andrea Camilleri's favourite detective after his own Montalbano" and equally good news is that Camilleri's translator, Stephen Sartarelli is translating Inspector Bordelli.

No cover image yet, but here's the blurb:

Florence, summer 1963. Everyone has left town for the holidays, and the city is deserted, hot and full of mosquitoes. Inspector Bordelli is tossing and turning in bed when a telephone call informs him of a mysterious death: a wealthy Signora has been found dead in her villa. Next to the bed lies a glass with traces of her asthma medicine, but the coroner explains a sudden asthma attack is unlikely to have been the cause of death. Bordelli sets to work. Each suspect has a solid alibi, but there is something that doesn't quite add up . . .

The Wings of the Sphinx - sneak peek

The eleventh in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series, The Wings of the Sphinx, will be published on 29 December by Penguin USA. The UK edition will be out in June 2010.

1

What ever happened to those early mornings when, upon awakening, for no reason, he would feel a sort of current of pure happiness running through him?

It wasn't the fact that the day was starting out cloudless and windless and shining bright with the sun. No, it was a different sensation, one that had nothing to do with his meteoropathic nature. If he had to explain, it was like feeling in harmony with all of creation, perfectly synchronized with a great stellar clock precisely positioned in space, at the very point that had been destined for him since birth.

Bullshit? Fantasy? Maybe.

But the indisputable fact was that he used to have this feeling rather often, whereas now, for the last few years, it was so long, nice knowing you. Gone. Vanished. In fact, nowadays early mornings very often inspired a feeling of refusal in him, a sort of instinctive rejection of what awaited him once he was forced to accept the new day, even if there were no particular hassles awaiting him in the hours ahead. And the proof of this was the way he acted upon emerging from sleep.

Translated by Stephen Sartarelli

(NB. typed in by me from an uncorrected proof and may not resemble the finished product.)

Publishing Deal - Giorgio Faletti

I mentioned I Kill a few days ago but the news is that Constable & Robinson have signed a second book from Giorgio Faletti:

Constable & Robinson has signed a two book deal with Italian thriller writer Giorgio Faletti.

The first title, I Kill, will be published in June 2010, with the second book I am God scheduled for UK publication in 2011.

“Faletti is a phenomenon on the continent, where he sells in the millions. [...] thrilled to be publishing what is a major talent for the English-speaking market for the first time.”

Read the whole article here.

New Italian crime fiction

I've had an email alerting me about a new publisher, Hersilia Press, which is focusing on Italian crime fiction. Their first book is Inspector Cataldo's Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi which is the first in a ten (so far) book series and will be published in March 2010.

In a quiet holiday town in the Italian Apennines, during a torrid summer, a string of gruesome deaths stirs up trouble in the local community: a suspected suicide which Inspector Cataldo is called in to investigate brings to the surface shady events belonging to the past, and a mysterious foreigner shakes up the delicate social balance of a group of friends who have a lot to hide.

UK edition of I Kill - in 2010

I Kill by Giorgio Faletti which was published in the US in June 2008 is getting its UK release in June 2010, published by Constable Robinson:

Monte Carlo. A ruthless serial killer stalks the rich and famous. The victims are found horrifically mutilated. Each kill is announced on the city’s most popular radio show.

‘The voice on the radio.
The writing, red as blood.
I kill…’

For seasoned FBI agent Frank Ottobre, who is recovering from his wife’s death, and police commissioner Nicolas Hulot, this will be the most harrowing case of their careers. They must track down the enigmatic killer before he strikes again. But this killer is always one step ahead of their every move…

What I'm reading...August Heat

The US edition of Andrea Camilleri's tenth and latest Montalbano novel, August Heat, is now available. The UK edition will follow in June.

1

He was sleeping so soundly that not even cannon-fire could have woken him. Well, maybe not cannon-fire, but the ring of the telephone, yes.

Nowadays, if a man living in a civilized country (ha!) hears cannon-blasts in his sleep, he will, of course, mistake them for thunderclaps, gun salutes on the feast day of the local saint, or furniture being moved by the upstairs neighbours, and go on sleeping soundly. But the ring of the telephone, the triumphal march of the mobile, or the doorbell, no: those are sounds of summons to which the civilized man (ha-ha!) has no choice but to surface from the depths of slumber and answer.

So, Montalbano got out of bed, glanced at the clock, then at the window, from which he gathered that it was going to be a very hot day, and went into the dining room where the telephone was ringing wildly.

‘Salvo! Where were you? I’ve been trying to get hold of your for half an hour!’

‘I’m sorry, Livia. I was in the shower so I couldn’t hear the phone.’

First lie of the day.

Read more of the extract from the UK edition at the PanMacmillan site. Interestingly my American proof copy not only has "cell" for "mobile", which is to be expected, but also "slime-buckets living upstairs" for "upstairs neighbours". I wonder if the final US version has the slime-buckets comment?

Italian Crime Novels published in 2008/9 - list updated

I've recently updated my amazon.co.uk list of Italian crime novels published in 2008 and 2009. Visit the list, here.

Books about European Crime Fiction

One of the many knowledgeable commenters on the blog, Simon Clarke, has alerted me to a series of books about European crime fiction being published by the University of Wales. First up is:

French Crime Fiction
This first volume in the European crime fictions series acts as an introduction to crime writing in French. It presents the development of crime fiction in French cultures from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day and explores the distinctive features of a French-language tradition. Such discussion will be grounded in the study of novels by selected French-speaking writers, some of whom have an established international reputation, such as Georges Simenon, whilst others may be relatively unknown, such as Léo Malet.

Each chapter will examine a specific period, movement or group of writers, as well as engaging with broader debates over the contribution crime fiction makes more generally to contemporary French and European culture. All extracts in French will be translated into English. The book is written in an accessible style without assuming previous knowledge of crime fiction novels and their development in France, thus the title will appeal to undergraduates and also to the general, informed reader of crime fiction.

(This is due to be published in April 2009, £75 for a hardback edition.)

This is to be followed by Italian Crime Fiction:
This book constitutes an introduction to crime writing in Italian from its first development in the 1930s to the present day. It explores the distinctive features of the Italian tradition, such as the close links with the American and French tradition and the social commentary which characterises much crime fiction in Italian in the post-war period. This study focuses on novels by selected Italian writers, some of whom have an established international reputation, such as Leonardo Sciascia and Umberto Eco, whilst others may be relatively unknown, such as the new generation of crime writers of the Bologna school, and analyses the contribution crime fiction makes more generally to contemporary Italian and European culture. The book will be written in an accessible style aimed at undergraduates and does not assume any previous knowledge of Italian Crime Fiction. And will also appeal to the general, informed reader. All extracts in Italian will be translated into English.
(Currently listed on amazon for March 2010)

And hopefully appearing this year: Criminal Scandinavia: Nordic Crime Fiction. The information from Simon is that: "It's edited by Andrew Nestingen and Paula Arvas and will contain some great essays on contemporary Scandinavian writers such as Mankell, Marklund, Nesser, Holt, Indridason while also remembering the work of Sjowall and Wahloo".

The website does list a paperback version for the Italian volume at a more modest £16.99 but if your library has no plans to stock these books then an Inter-Library Loan is always worth a go. The fee is currently £2.50, refundable if the book is unobtainable..

More Forthcoming Book Lists

Well buoyed on by the success of forthcoming Scandinavian crime/mystery novels, I've created a couple more list on amazon.co.uk for French and Italian crime novels coming soon to a bookshelf near you:

Forthcoming French Crime novels in 2008 (amazon.co.uk)

Forthcoming Italian Crime novels in 2008 (amazon.co.uk) - a bit short at the moment but I'll add to it as I hear of more titles.

Recent Italian crime fiction reviews in the blogosphere...

A few weeks ago I posted that I was looking forward to God's Spy by Juan Gomez-Jurado. Well it seems Material Witness has acquired an advance copy and calls it "...a ripping tale and a very good read". You can read the full review here.

Crime Scraps posted a review recently of the second in the De Luca trilogy by Carlo Lucarelli - The Damned Season - which came out in the UK on 17 June. The De Luca books are set in an Italy in chaos at the end of the Second World War. The first one in the series is Carte Blanche, reviewed here on Euro Crime.