Euro Noir E-Book

Barry Forshaw

• Herausgeber: Pocket Essentials
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Euro Noir by Britain's leading crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw (author of Nordic Noir) examines the astonishing success of European fiction and drama. This is often edgier, grittier and more compelling than some of its British or American equivalents, and the book provides a highly readable guide for those wanting to look further than the obvious choices. The sheer volume of new European writers and films is daunting but Euro Noir provides a roadmap to the territory and is also a perfect travel guide to the genre. Barry Forshaw covers influential Italian authors, such as Andrea Camilleri and Leonardo Sciascia and Mafia crime dramas Romanzo Criminale and Gomorrah, along with the gruesome Gialli crime films. He also considers important French and Belgian writers such as Maigret's creator Georges Simenon to today's Fred Vargas, cult television programmes Braquo and Spiral, and films, from the classic heist movie Rififi to modern successes such as Hidden, Mesrine and Tell No One. German and Austrian greats are covered including Jakob Arjouni and Jan Costin Wagner, and crime films such as Run Lola Run and The Lives of Others. Euro Noir also covers the best crime writing and filmmaking from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Holland and other European countries and celebrates the wide scope of European crime fiction, films and TV.

Leseprobe

Euro Noir by Britain’s leading crime fiction expert Barry Forshaw (author of Nordic Noir) examines the astonishing success of European fiction and drama. This is often edgier, grittier and more compelling than some of its British or American equivalents, and provides a highly readable guide for those wanting to look further than the obvious choices.

The sheer volume of new European writers and films is daunting but Euro Noir presents a roadmap to the territory and is the perfect travel guide to the genre. The book covers influential Italian authors such as Andrea Camilleri and Leonardo Sciascia and Mafia crime dramas Romanzo criminale and Gomorrah, along with the gruesome Gialli crime films. From France and Belgium, important writers from Maigret’s creator Georges Simenon to today’s Fred Vargas, cult television programmes Braquo and Spiral and films, from the classic heist movie Rififi to modern sucesses such as Hidden, Mesrine and Tell No One. German and Austrian greats are covered including Jakob Arjouni and Jan Costin Wagner, crime films including Run Lola Run and The Lives of Others.

Euro Noir also covers the best crime writing and filmmaking from Spain, Portugal, Greece, Holland and other European countries and celebrates the wide scope of European crime fiction, films and TV.

Barry Forshaw’s latest books are British Crime Film and Death in a Cold Climate: A Guide to Scandinavian Crime Fiction. Other work includes British Crime Writing: An Encyclopedia, The Rough Guide to Crime Fiction and Guns for Hire: The Modern Adventure Thriller, along with books on Italian cinema and the first biography of Stieg Larsson. His next books are British Gothic Cinema and a study of Thomas Harris and The Silence of the Lambs. He writes for various newspapers, edits Crime Time, and broadcasts for ITV and BBC TV documentaries. He has been Vice Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association.

POCKET ESSENTIALS

To all the authors, translators, publishers and filmmakers who have talked to me during the preparation of this book.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 Italy

Chapter 2 France

Chapter 3 Germany, Austria and Switzerland

Chapter 4 Spain and Portugal

Chapter 5 Greece

Chapter 6 The Netherlands

Chapter 7 Poland

Chapter 8 Romania

Chapter 9 Scandicrime Revisited

Appendix 1 Publishing Translated Crime Fiction

Appendix 2 The Petrona Perspective

Appendix 3 Crossing the Bridge with Sofia Helin

Appendix 4 Jørn Lier Horst: Language – Hero – Environment

Appendix 5 Selected Top Crime Novels by Country

Appendix 6 Selected Top Crime Films and TV by Country

Copyright

Introduction

It’s not just the Scandinavians. The Anglo-American domination of the crime fiction genre has been under siege by Nordic Noir for quite some time, but another juggernaut is crashing its way into the genre – the astonishingly varied and exciting crime fiction streaming out of other European countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and others. Examining and celebrating this exhilarating body of criminal work, I’ve tried to bring to the continental countries the enthusiasm I’ve previously shown when writing about Scandinavian crime fiction. From important early writers such as Georges Simenon to more recent giants such as Andrea Camilleri, all the key names (and many new and lively talents) are here in a book I’ve designed as both guide and shopping list for readers. The initial idea occurred to me a few years ago when I was filming the BBC documentary Italian Noir (and its companion, Nordic Noir).

But the crime genre is as much about films and TV as it is about books, and Euro Noir is as much a celebration of the former as the latter. The hottest new genre on television and the big screen – and the one with the most cultural respectability – is crime film drama from countries other than Britain and America. (The Sunday Times has talked about ‘a cross-Channel crime wave’.) And with new films and TV shows about to take the phenomenon to ever more stratospheric levels, even more attention will be focused on foreign crime, with its franker, more graphic treatment of violence and sexuality than the Anglo-Saxon version.

First of all, I think it’s important to set out the parameters of this book. Let me tell you what Euro Noir tries to do – and what it doesn’t try to do. The idea is to present a user-friendly, wide-ranging snapshot of the best achievements (both on the printed page and on screen) of crime not originally written (or played) in English. However, unlike my earlier Nordic Noir (where even in 160 pages it was possible to present a largely inclusive survey), such comprehensive coverage would obviously be impossible in an area which has been producing splendid work from a variety of countries for so many years and with the space available to me in Euro Noir. I’ve tried to pack in as much as I can. I’ve concentrated on Western Europe and I’ve had to be selective, with an emphasis on the contemporary rather than the classic. Even so, you may discover that a favourite of yours is given relatively concise coverage, while someone else may receive what appears to be more generous attention. My rationale was simple. I wanted to present as varied and interesting a picture of the range of foreign crime books and films within the amount of pages available to me, and if some very familiar writers had to be dealt with more concisely in order that new and exciting writers could be given the kind of attention they have not received previously, it was a trade-off I thought worth making. As for the thorny issue of translation: no one is more aware of the inestimable value of that art than I am (as translators who know me will attest!), so I trust I’ll be forgiven an occasional inconsistency in crediting these valuable professionals. Four credits I really can’t miss, though, are Antonio Hill, Paul Johnston, Quentin Bates and Charles den Tex for their valuable conversations about Spain, Greece, Iceland and the Netherlands respectively.

As for the general issue of which authors and books to include, the pitfalls yawned before me. In the final analysis, I was aware that I was (in any case) on a hiding to nothing. Even when working on a massively inclusive two-volume book such as British Crime Writing: An Encyclopaedia, I knew that there were always new writers appearing (often on a weekly basis), along with a host of interesting writers from the past whose work was being exhumed. (The latter is a growing phenomenon these days, particularly with ebook initiatives.) I can only hope that readers will not find the inevitable omissions here too egregious – don’t forget that such omissions have at least meant that other, very worthwhile creators have been included.

Holding up the Mirror

Do you consider crime fiction to be a harmless diversion? And do you pack a foreign crime novel when travelling abroad to while away the time on Eurostar? In fact, if you’re not paying close attention to the text, you could be missing an incisive and penetrating guide to the socio-economic and political elements of the countries you’re visiting, freighted in amidst the detection and rising body count. The ever-growing success of crime fiction (other than the British/American model) is built on the awareness among readers that the best writers from Italy, Germany and elsewhere are now regarded as social commentators with quite as acute a grasp of the way their countries work as any serious journalist. (After the Breivik killings in Norway, who was the pundit most often called upon to talk about the influence of the far right in that country? It was, in fact, Norway’s leading crime writer, Jo Nesbo.)

Another corollary of the boom? The popularity of crime in translation may be a modest (but cogent) response to the ‘pull-up-the-drawbridge’ thinking of Little Englanders. As the translator Kevin Halliwell said to me: ‘The extraordinary success of the European crime genre in the UK proves that British readers and viewers are much less insular than some publishers and TV programmers would have us believe. A renewed interest in modern foreign languages – and in translation in particular – is likely to be a serendipitous consequence.’

ITALY

The sun beats down, and cold-hearted murder is done. The very individual (and more laidback) approach to crime fiction in Italy, most Latin of countries – with its endemic political and religious corruption – is fertile territory for crime fiction, not least for the way its deceptive languor is shot through with the ever-present influence of the Mafia.

It is notable (and perhaps regrettable) that, as yet, many of the remarkable and idiosyncratic talents of this Mediterranean branch of the crime fiction genre have not made the mark that their Scandinavian confrères have. But enthusiasm among non-Italian speaking readers is growing. The attentive reader will take on board the sometimes subtle, sometimes direct political insights and historical contexts to be found in the work of such writers as Leonardo Sciascia, Carlo Lucarelli and (of course) Andrea Camilleri. But along with the better-known names, much light may be thrown on the strategies and achievements of writers yet to break through outside Italy. Potential readers, however, should be aware that sheer narrative pleasure is the key element of most Italian crime fiction, rather than (generally speaking) the more astringent sociopolitical fare from other countries. Italy, of course, has produced one of the most ambitious historical crime novels ever written (though one that has defeated many a reader with insufficient patience), Umberto Eco’s sprawling, phantasmagorical, philosophical The Name of the Rose (1980), a book graced with one of the most celebrated translations ever accorded a non-English language novel, courtesy of William Weaver.

Apart from the Italian writers listed below, mention should also be made of the contribution to the dissemination of Italian crime writing of a man known to many readers as the ‘King of the Erotic Thriller’. Due to the burgeoning popularity of the latter genre, his time has certainly arrived and he is now one half of the EL James rival, ‘Vina Jackson’. However, crime fiction fans are more likely to celebrate Maxim Jakubowski (born in England to Russian-British and Polish parents and raised in France) as one of the most reliable editors in the field, with a lengthy CV of distinguished entries. One in particular, Venice Noir (2012), is part of the long-running ‘Noir’ series issued by Akashic Books, and is a particularly cherishable entry. The company appears to be working its way through every city on the planet (how long before they get to Wigan Noir?), but Italy is solid territory. The writers represented here are an eclectic bunch, with some prestigious Italians (all ably translated) such as the idiosyncratic Matteo Righetto, along with some reliable Brits such as Roy Grace’s creator, the estimable Peter James. And while we’re mentioning Italian crime writers who deserve attention, the following need a namecheck: Marco Malvadi, Dacia Maraini (sorely in need of more UK translations), Giampiero Rigosi, the more literary Antonio Tabucchi and the prolific, highly adroit Marco Vichi (whose Death in Florence is essential reading).

Latin Temperaments

If French crime fiction lags slightly behind in the social relevance stakes, things are, however, changing in Italy, as that country’s crime fiction is gradually coming to terms with a fractured political situation and a long series of political scandals. The doyen of Italian crime writers, Andrea Camilleri, rarely engages directly with politics or social issues. (Although, during the massively controversial Silvio Berlusconi era, he did quote Dante: ‘The country has the wrong helmsman.’). While his books accept endemic corruption as part of the fabric of Italian society, they are – generally speaking – elegantly written escapist fare. Other writers, such as Carlo Lucarelli and Giancarlo De Cataldo, engage more directly with the way society works, but few tackle such issues as bloody-mindedly as recent writers like Roberto Costantini.

Andrea Camilleri: The Master

The seal of the best foreign crime writing is as much the stylish prose as it is the unfamiliar settings readers are transported to. When both ingredients are presented with the expertise that is Andrea Camilleri’s hallmark, Mr Micawber’s words are à propos: result, happiness. Camilleri has familiarised us with his Sicilian copper Salvo Montalbano, a laser-sharp mind, and a gourmet whose mind frequently strays to food. Most of all, we know his stamping ground: the beautiful, sleepy territory of Vigata. And the heat. In August Heat (2009), it is omnipresent and crushing.

The novel starts with a sleight of hand, cleverly misdirecting the reader. Montalbano is dragooned into a search for the brattish child of friends. The house they are staying in is thoroughly searched, but there is no place the child could have hidden. Until, that is, Montalbano discovers a hole in the ground that leads to a hidden subterranean floor – one illegally concealed to sidestep planning laws. The child is there, alive, but also in the sunless room is a trunk, containing the plastic-wrapped, naked body of a murdered girl.

All of this is masterfully handled, and will delight Camilleri admirers. But there are caveats. What, for example, of Montalbano’s team of coppers? The author assumes we’ll know them and offers not a jot of characterisation or description which becomes a problem for new readers. No characterisation, that is, apart from that of Montalbano’s clownish assistant, Catarella, long something of a problem for English readers. How do you translate a character who uses broad Sicilian argot? Does a translator – in this instance, the admirable Stephen Sartarelli – render what Catarella says into pidgin English? Or into how pidgin Italian might sound in English? The ungainly compromises here are unsatisfactory (‘poisonally’, ‘he’s a one wherats is got a shoe store’), and prompt the thought that perhaps they should be considerably toned down in the translation process. Italian readers may chuckle at the original, but it’s a trial for English readers.

But these are minor quibbles, with the customary sardonic rendering of Camilleri’s epicurean inspector pleasurable as ever. And the author is always, bracingly, a provocative writer: he has Montalbano admiring (unnamed) the Swedish writers Sjöwall and Wahlöö, and their ‘ferocious and justified attack on social democracy and the government’. Such spleen is in Camilleri’s novel too, along with the aforementioned thrust at a ‘helmsman whom [Italy] would have been better off without’.

More Montalbano

The most striking foreign crime fiction writing may be found in the very personal prose of the best writers as it is in the colourful locales we are taken to. This piquant combination (very much a Camilleri signature) blossoms in The Wings of the Sphinx (2009). Here again is Camilleri’s intuitive Sicilian copper Montalbano who combines rigorous analytical skills with copiously indulged gourmet tastes. Here again is the pretty, somnolent territory of Vigàta. Montalbano is having problems with his long-distance lover, Livia, and he has other worries: he is aware of the passing of the years and the deadening effect of the violence that is such a constant presence in his job. Then a grisly discovery is made – the corpse of a young woman is found, half of her face missing. The remaining clue to who the dead woman was is a tattoo – the eponymous sphinx. The same mark is to be found on three other young women, Russian immigrants to Italy. All three are sex workers – and all three have disappeared. This is highly involving fare and The Wings of the Sphinx (translated by Stephen Sartarelli) is top-notch Camilleri.

In The Age of Doubt (2012), an encounter with a mysterious young woman leads Montalbano to the harbour where he is to discover something very strange: the crew of a yacht called the Vanna, which was due to dock in the area, has discovered a body floating in the water. The face of the dead man has been mutilated. Montalbano begins to take a very close interest in the crew of the yacht and its enigmatic owner, the attractive and volatile Livia Giovanni. The most idiomatic foreign crime fiction is a passport to the exotic settings we are transported to, and this element is delivered with the skill that is Andrea Camilleri’s stock-in-trade in one of the veteran writer’s most recently translated books. We are back in the company of Camilleri’s canny Sicilian policeman, whose counterintuitive response to crime remains nonpareil, and his sybaritic gourmet tastes are still firmly in place.

The Track of Sand (2011) will keep admirers more than happy. Montalbano is strolling on the beach near his home when he discovers a dead horse. But when his men arrive on the scene, the horse has disappeared leaving behind only traces in the sand. Later, Rachele, an attractive horsewoman, reports the disappearance of her horse, stabled by one Lo Duca, one of the richest men in Sicily. He, too, has discovered that one of his horses has gone missing. As the above suggests, this is one of the most unusual of Camilleri’s novels, and all the winning characteristics we have come to know so well in his epicurean hero are firmly in place.

The Scent of the Night (2005) and The Potter’s Field (2012) are subtly different from other novels by the veteran writer. In the first, an elderly man holds a distraught secretary at gunpoint, and the doughty Inspector Montalbano finds himself involved. The secretary’s employer, a high-flying financial adviser, has disappeared, taking with him several million lire placed in his hands by the citizens of Vigàta. And the case has some personal ramifications for Montalbano, involving building taking place where he doesn’t want it to happen – on the site of his favourite olive tree. With the usual quirky characterisation of his epicurean gourmet copper, along with the unflinching insight into the vagaries of human behaviour that are Camilleri’s stock in trade, the resulting mix provides one of the most delicious entries in a highly distinctive canon.

In The Potter’s Field, Vigàta is suffering from storms, among the worse the generally sedate town has known. Montalbano is summoned when a dismembered body is found in a field of clay. The body bears traces of being the victim of an execution, and this would appear – once again – to be the work of the local Mafia. But there are several unanswered questions. Why, for example, was the body cut into 30 separate pieces? Matters are complicated for Montalbano by the strange, uncommunicative behaviour of his colleague Mimi – along with the seductive appeal of Dolores Alfano, looking for Montalbano’s help in finding her missing husband. The seal of the best foreign crime writing is as much the stylish prose as it is the unfamiliar settings readers are transported to. When both ingredients are presented with the expertise that is Andrea Camilleri’s hallmark, the result is sheer pleasure.

Leonardo Sciascia: The Godfather

The immensely influential Leonardo Sciascia (who was born in Racalmuto, Sicily in 1921 and died in 1989 in Palermo) is one of the most comprehensively significant of Italian writers, celebrated for his swingeing examination of political corruption and the corrosive concomitants of power. His work is shot through with intellectual rigour. Sciascia made his living teaching even when writing and only decided to write full time in 1968. His political commitment was well known: he was a Communist Party representative on Palermo city council, and followed this with a stint working for the Radical Party in the Italian Parliament. From Sciascia’s early work in 1950 (Fables of the Dictatorship with its critique of fascism) onwards, political engagement was always on the writer’s agenda. His first crime-related novel appeared in 1961, the brilliantly written The Day of the Owl, with its sharply drawn picture of the Mafia, consolidated in later books. His influence on the many writers who succeeded him is incalculable.

Gianrico Carofiglio: Proust and Prosecution

The elegant Gianrico Carofiglio is very much his own man. Meeting him in the plush fifth floor bar of Waterstone’s, Piccadilly, when he was in London to promote his novel Temporary Perfections (2011), I was quickly impressed by his erudition (Proust, Chesterton and Steinbeck are cultural reference points namechecked within a few minutes), his fierce intelligence and knowledge of the law (prior to his highly successful crime-writing career, he was celebrated as a prosecutor in the Italian town of Bari), and his extremely proficient English. Yes, Gianrico Carofiglio is his own man – but after just a few minutes in his company it’s impossible not to be reminded of another highly successful crime writer.

Carofiglio is tall, attractive and casually dressed in jeans that show just the right amount of distress. His effect on women is quickly evident, and when he talks about the fact that he is regarded by feminine admirers as something of a surrogate for his fictional protagonist, lawyer Guido Guerrieri, it’s hard not to think: ‘Gianrico Carofiglio is the Italian Lee Child!’ And if his hero, Guido, is a more thoughtful, less two-fisted character than the brawling Jack Reacher, he is as much a favourite with female readers as Lee Child’s maverick trouble-shooter. Asked about the author/character syndrome, Carofiglio smiles and stretches out his long legs, sinking back into the overstuffed armchair. ‘Well, the question I am most often asked by those who read my books is: “Are you Guido?” I used to say no, I’m not; he’s a character I write about. But then I realised the effect he was having on readers – particularly women – and I decided to be more… flexible!’

Crime fiction in translation is a taste the English are rapidly acquiring, and writing as vivid and astringent as Carofiglio’s should accelerate the trend. The author is a brave man: an anti-Mafia judge in Puglia who has taken on the powerful and (lethal) corruption that is endemic in Italy. His debut novel Involuntary Witness, published by plucky independent Bitter Lemon Press in 2010 and followed since by other, well-received books, begins with the discovery of a child’s body in a well at a southern Italian beach resort. A Senegalese peddler is arraigned for sexual assault and murder, but Defence Counsel Guido Guerrieri realises that the truth is more complex. A tangled skein of racism and judicial corruption confronts Guerrieri. Italian crime fiction seems more ready to take on uncomfortable social issues than the home-grown product, and Carofiglio’s trenchant prose makes for irresistible reading – the latest book, Temporary Perfections, is even more accomplished. (His English translators are Howard Curtis and Antony Shugaar.)

His time as a prosecutor has left Carofiglio crammed with the kind of minute legal expertise that he channels so entertainingly (if exhaustively) into his novels, but he is surprisingly dismissive of his time in this high-profile job. ‘I suppose I reached something of a midlife crisis,’ he says. ‘I’d reached the age of 40, and thought “what am I doing?” I realised that I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do with my life. Certainly, my job was demanding and fulfilling and it was satisfying to work within the parameters of the law – interrogation, for instance, is a fascinating process (Carofiglio has written popular non-fiction books about the legal profession), but ever since I read Jack London’s White Fang as a boy, I wanted to write – that book was genuinely life-changing for me. At the age of 40 I decided to buckle down and actually do it – to try to write. And to my relief, readers appear to be responding to what I’m doing.’

That, of course, is putting it modestly. Carofiglio’s books are highly successful – and almost invariably well reviewed – throughout the world, and he has arrived in London after an exhausting tour of the United States talking about Temporary Perfections. His publishers, François von Hurter and Laurence Colchester of Bitter Lemon Press (an imprint that specialises in translated fiction), shake their heads in amazement at just how fresh he looks after his punishing schedule, and how adroitly he deals with all the mechanics of promoting a book – such as this interview.

More coffee is ordered, and I try to draw Carofiglio on the writing process. After Proust and Chesterton as exemplars, he had mentioned how he first read about London in Conan Doyle’s fog-shrouded evocation of the city, visible below from Waterstone’s fifth floor window. For his writing process, he draws on another literary model. ‘Margaret Atwood uses an image that struck me – it’s like entering a darkened room and finding a way to the exit. At the exit is – hopefully – the book you have been trying to write.’

He relaxes into a recumbent position. ‘The most important thing for me now, though, is writing. When I was a boy I avidly consumed everything: Westerns, films, comic strips, Jules Verne. But like my protagonist Guido I wanted to go after the bad guys. In my time as a public prosecutor, I dealt with everything from Mafia murders to drug trafficking and extortion. Certainly my view of humanity was conditioned by this work – both for good and for ill. And if I can utilise all that in my novels, that’s immensely satisfying for me.’

Gianrico Carofiglio possesses amour propre, but also something of a quiet modesty, so it is a little surprising when he says: ‘After all, I have been described as Italy’s best writer of legal thrillers…’ And then comes the punchline: ‘But then I am Italy’s only writer of legal thrillers…’

Giulio Leoni andThe Third Heaven Conspiracy

Fourteenth-century Italy. In an abandoned church on the outskirts of Florence, master craftsman Ambroglio is discovered murdered, having been working on an unfinished mosaic. Yes, The Third Heaven Conspiracy (2007) is a historical murder mystery – but who has author Giulio Leoni settled on as his detective to look into this bloody murder? No less than Dante Alighieri, who is to write (after solving this mystery) the immortal The Divine Comedy. Here, Dante has been elected to a position of authority – but still finds time to investigate the catacombs (and other dark places) for the killer. An ingenious and atmospheric historical mystery, and one of a growing number of modern novels which reference Dante. (Dan Brown added to this number in 2013 with the phenomenally successful but much-criticised Inferno.)

Niccolò Ammaniti

After a lengthy delay, Canongate issued a new paperback edition of Ammaniti’s I’m Not Scared (originally published in an English translation by Jonathan Hunt in 2003), alongside his later novel The Crossroads in 2010. The two books can be read as companion pieces on the complex relationship between father and son, a theme that clearly fascinates Ammaniti – before making his name as a thriller writer, he collaborated with his father (a professor in psychopathology) on an essay on the problems of adolescence entitled ‘In the name of the son’.

I’m Not Scared is set in the blisteringly hot summer of 1978. While the adults who live in the few houses that make up Aqua Traverse stay indoors, the children roam the countryside on their bikes. And on one of their excursions, in an abandoned farmhouse, Michele discovers a terrible secret. Ammaniti manages to walk a tightrope between writing from the point of view of the nine-year-old Michele and providing enough information (largely through the voice of the narrator, an older Michele) so that we, the readers, are soon able to connect the fateful discovery with the arrival of a mysterious stranger and the tension pervading the village. Not only is this a gripping, unputdownable thriller, Ammaniti’s realistic portrayal of his young hero and Michele’s relationship with his friends and family make it a compelling coming-of-age drama.

In The Crossroads, the lead character, Cristiano, is slightly older – thirteen. At the centre of the narrative is the complex, loving, but occasionally violent relationship between Cristiano and his father Rino, an alcoholic right-wing extremist who is fighting social services to keep his son. Rino and his two friends – a man who blames himself for the death of his daughter, and a dreamer who was strange even before he electrocuted himself – come up with a plan to solve all their problems: they’ll ramraid an ATM machine. But instead of a standard robbery-gone-wrong plot, Ammaniti gives us a series of coincidences and twists that, although totally unbelievable, keep the novel hurtling along. Unlike the earlier I’m Not Scared, with its sense of unease and suspense, this is a full-blown black comedy, shocking in its descriptions of violence and human stupidity. The popularity of Ammaniti’s books in his native Italy is evidenced by the fact that both these novels have been made into films by Gabriele Salvatores, the director of Mediterraneo. His 2011 novel Che la Festa Cominci has also been translated into English as Let the Games Begin.

Summer with Luigi Guicciardi

In Luigi Guicciardi’s intriguing Inspector Cataldo’s Criminal Summer (2010, translated by Iain Halliday), we are taken to Guiglia – a small Italian resort in the Apennines where nothing much seems to happen. But one hot summer the town’s peace is shattered by a series of grisly deaths. Inspector Cataldo is drafted in to investigate the first death, an apparent suicide, and is soon engulfed in a mystery that encompasses events that happened 18 years before, a group of childhood friends, and a stranger who has suddenly appeared in Guiglia. Luigi Guicciardi’s protagonist Cataldo is an atypically tall, blond Sicilian, who works methodically and calmly in this, the first in a series of crime novels where the emphasis is very much on solving the puzzle rather than on vivid and unsettling descriptions of violence. Let’s hope that the (relatively) new publisher Hersilia Press, the brainchild of Ilaria Meliconi, continues to provide English readers with the further adventures of Inspector Cataldo.

Delivering Evil: Roberto Costantini

Speaking (on several occasions) to Roberto Costantini is something I found a bracing experience; apart from anything else, his cool anatomising of Italian politics is laser-sharp. Before I met him, I was aware that a head of steam had built for his epic novel The Deliverance of Evil (2013) – but was it worth all the fuss? The Tripoli-born writer was being touted as an Italian Stieg Larsson, with this first book of a trilogy undergoing a title change in English (the Italian title would translate literally as You Are Evil), a troubled central character, a strong and bitter political strain – and even the imprimatur of Larsson’s publishers in the UK. But there the resemblances end. In the novel (translated by NS Thomson), Costantini’s detective is Commissario Michele Balistreri, and readers patient enough to stick with the unhurried prose will find a picture of an entire society vitiated by corruption along with one of the most fully realised protagonists in modern crime fiction – if, indeed, this can be called a crime novel. In fact, The Deliverance of Evil is actually a state-of-the-nation piece, and the failure and stasis of the compromised hero might be read as a metaphor for Italy’s untrustworthy authority figures.

The novel is set in two time periods. In Rome in July 1982 (on the eve of the Italian victory at the World Cup in Spain – success or failure at football is a central image), Elisa Sordi, employed by the real estate company of the Vatican, disappears. The investigator is Police Commissioner Balistreri. Self-centred and lazy, he invests little in the case, which ends with the body of a young woman discovered on the banks of the Tiber. The crime remains unsolved, but its repercussions spread out over many years. In July 2006, the dead girl’s mother takes her own life, and Balistreri once again becomes involved, but he is now a very different man. Although he has been promoted, crippling remorse plagues him, and his self-loathing is hardly alleviated by antidepressants. The long-buried secrets he is to uncover expose the fault lines in his own troubled society (the background of Costantini’s protagonist is keenly drawn, from his devotion to Mussolini and the ultra-right to clandestine work for the security forces as Aldo Moro is murdered by the Red Brigade).

With a new papacy drawing attention to the Vatican, Costantini’s novel could not be more timely, though its picture of church power as irredeemably corrupt will not please those hoping for a re-energised Catholic Church (Balistreri himself has been a victim of priestly abuse). The Deliverance of Evil is not for the casual reader, but those seeking a substantial, ambitious novel drawn on the most sprawling of canvases will find their commitment amply rewarded.

The Multi-Tasking Giorgio Faletti

I’ve not yet managed to meet him. I had an event set up at the Italian Institute (and, as usual, I’d done my homework assiduously), but Giorgio Faletti cancelled. Perhaps he’d heard about my Italian, although the event was to be in English! Faletti is a man clearly not content with just one career. Over the years, he has been a lawyer, TV comedian, film actor (e.g. Cinema Paradiso) and singer/songwriter – and, what’s more, he has enjoyed considerable success in each of these careers. His blockbuster thriller, I Kill (2008), had already sold over 5 million copies worldwide before its UK appearance. While most Italian crime fiction is deliberately parochial, Faletti paints his exuberant narrative on the largest of canvases. The template here is very much the grand scale – the international thriller as practised by American and British writers – and he knows exactly what he’s doing. The setting is Monte Carlo, playground of the rich and bolthole for the criminal. In I Kill, the more upscale residents are being targeted by an implacable serial killer who calls himself ‘No One’ (shades of Homer’s Odyssey). A radio talk-show host allows him to announce each killing against a soundtrack that indicates who the next victim will be. And at the scene of each crime are the words ‘I Kill’ scrawled in the victim’s blood. The killer’s nemeses are FBI agent Frank Ottobre, struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife, and police Commissioner Nicholas Hulot. Both men have their work cut out for them, as No One continues to cut a bloody swathe through his victims, seemingly unstoppable. Giorgio Faletti is well aware of the imperatives of the international thriller, and presses all the requisite buttons here. The book is long – over 500 pages – but the tension is maintained throughout with genuine skill.

In The Killer in My Eyes (2012), Mayor Marsalis undergoes a personal tragedy when his son is found dead in a New York studio, his body stained red and disposed on the floor like Schultz’s cartoon character Linus with a blanket by his ear and his thumb in his mouth. Marsalis turns to his brother, ex-policeman Jordan, to look into the bizarre murder. And the killer is to strike again, many times.