Carlo Lucarelli

A wonderful mystery set in early 1950s Bologna as the superpowers duel for intelligence that can be used in nuclear weapons. One possibly useful physicist dies in an auto accident and two months later his wife is brutally murdered. Is there a connection?

De Luca is temporarily rehabilitated from his Fascist past to investigate the murder under cover. Presenting himself as Morandi, an engineer or perhaps a music impresario, De Luca penetrates the social circle around the dead professor and show more his wife. Bodies begin to accumulate while De Luca is drawn further into the intrigue.

One of the best things about the book is the reappearance of De Luca's old comrade in arms, Pugliese, who plays a crucial role as the novel winds down.

Any mystery is a game between author and reader. Lucarelli plays fair with the reader, strewing the clues about and letting the reader build his or her case.

Strongly recommended. show less

Christmas 1953, in the middle of the Cold War. A murder takes place in ice-cold, snow-covered Bologna: the beautiful wife of a professor is drowned in the bathtub of her husband's city flat. Commissario De Luca, formerly ‘Italy's best policeman’, takes up the investigation after five years of involuntary leave. But nothing is as it seems. The enquiries and his passion for a young, dark-skinned jazz singer almost cost De Luca his life, and in the end he is faced with a difficult show more decision.
This was an interesting book. It transports me as a reader to another time. I learnt a lot about the political realities of Italy during and after WWII that I hadn't realised before. So much surveillance from different factions made this book very exciting. show less

I picked up Judges in the library, principally because it contains a story by Giancarlo de Cotaldo, the writer of one of my favourite European TV series – Romanzo Criminale. I have yet to encounter a novel of his in English, so this was the next best thing.

Judges is an anthology of three novellas by leading Italian crime writers; each story centres on an Italian Judge prosecuting a case. (The reader needs to bear in mind the investigative role of a Judge in Italy).

Andrea Camilleri, show more renowned author of the Montalbano series, kicks off with Judge Surra. This is a story set shortly after Italian unification, about a Judge from out of town who is parachuted into a Sicilian village, blissfully unaware of the criminal undercurrents that swirl around him. Surra seemingly blunders along, narrowly avoiding continuing disasters and amazing the locals with his sang froid and coolness in the face of the local mafiosi. Or is he a lot smarter than we might think? This is an excellent and humorous short story, but it is marred by a clumsy and unnecessary afterword.

The Bambina by Carlo Lucarelli was probably my favourite story of the three. It’s centred on a female Bolognan Judge who looks so young she is nicknamed “The Baby” by the cops. While she has police protection as a matter of routine, it seems totally unnecessary, as she is only investigating a minor white collar fraud. Events then take a turn that gives her case a lot more significance. Lucarelli is able to surprise the reader and pack plot twists into a very short space. (The ending will make more sense to people with a bit of knowledge about real-life crime in Italy, BTW). I’ll certainly be looking for more of Lucarelli’s work.

De Cotaldo’s story is called The Triple Dream of the Prosecutor. This is a tale about a Judge who is prosecuting a corrupt local mayor, a man who bullied him as a child, giving rise to the suspicion that the Judge is biased. In the story, he dreams about things going wrong on the day of the trial, in a looping fashion somewhat like Groundhog Day. The construction is complex and a little confusing, and I found this story rather unsatisfying. I guess I expected something more hard-boiled from the author of Romanzo Criminale. (Could somebody PLEASE publish Romanzo Criminale in English, BTW)?

Overall I thought these three novellas were worth reading and something a bit different from the usual police procedurals. Good stuff. show less

Via delle Oche is the third volume in Lucarelli's Commissario De Luca Trilogy, and my favorite of the three. Set in 1948 Bologna, Commissario De Luca has somehow escaped execution as a fascist in post-war Italy and now he's a detective in the vice squad. Despite being a member of the political police during the war, it's clear that De Luca has no clear political leanings. He's just trying to survive. And for now he has, but it's also clear that he's in danger from warring political factions show more in the city. The book takes place primarily during four days in April, in the days leading up to a general election; the Communists are hoping to prevail against the Christian Democrats. Each chapter opens with headlines from the newspaper, emphasizing that soccer star Gino Bartali may be more popular than any of the political candidates.

There's also a murder to solve: a young man named Ermes Ricciotti who works as a bouncer in a brothel has been found hanging in his room. At first it appears to be suicide, but De Luca notices that the young man's feet wouldn't have reached the stool. Despite the fact that prostitution is legal in Italy, albeit strictly regulated, no one seems particularly concerned about the young man's murder. Except De Luca, of course. Soon, there's another murder, a photographer named Osvaldo Piras, who has connections to Ermes. As usual in a De Luca mystery, murders that originally seem to have no political motives eventually point in that direction. In the end De Luca knows who is responsible for the murder, but must accept that they will not be prosecuted.

My favorite aspect of this book was Lucarelli's evocative writing, probably aided by Michael Reynolds's translation, which moves a break-neck speed. I also thoroughly enjoyed the historical detail and sense of place. The reader never learns much about De Luca but in the end that seems fitting. He's a police officer, focused on solving crimes, preferably murders. At the very end of the book, we learn that he sleeps in a furnished room and only now, in his late 30s, is he thinking about getting a more comfortable place to live. The action has fast-forwarded from April 18, 1948, to July 14, 1948. The Christian Democrats won the election, but Communist Party leader Palmiro Togliotti has been shot, leading to a general strike and fears of revolution. Suddenly, survival seems more important to De Luca than comfort. show less