843. That's the number of crime stories,
noirs, and thrillers which appeared in Italian bookshops in 2004,
according to Il Venerdì,
the newspaper La Repubblica 's weekly magazine supplement,
on 16 th June of last year. And for 2005 and 2006 the trend has just
continued to get stronger. A rising tide that invades bookshop shelves,
pushing aside the odd Literary Figure, and creating jealousy and
attempts at imitation in order to ride the wave. And in this tide
ever more Italian authors swim. From a patrol they became a company,
and soon they'll become a battalion, some well-known names followed
by many ‘new entries', sometimes (as is the case with Faletti, for
example) with resounding success. Manoeuvring your way through them,
making choices, distinguishing the quality novel or collection of
short stories from some cunning or banal little lines is not always
easy. Bearing in mind that every choice is subjective and questionable,
I will limit myself here to providing a brief selection, a quick
wink to tempt the reader of this article to read (if a reader reads
not, what kind of reader is he?) the volumes suggested here.
And I will do so following the trail (as arbitrary as any other)
of a keyword, a faint guiding line.
Borders.
Claudio Camarca, Nel nome di
Dio, Kowalski Editore, 2006, 432 pages
They
have crossed every border, the immigrants, mournful souls, sometimes
victims, sometimes executioners, who seethe and wind their way
across the set and behind the scenes of Claudio Camarca's new novel,
all convinced that they are acting In The Name
of God / Nel
nome di Dio. Ten years ago Camarca, author, tv writer, director,
published Ordine pubblico, a good police story, dry, noir,
and violent (it would be good if it could be republished) filled
with serial killers, in which Faddi appeared, a coarse, tough cop,
worn out but indomitable. And Faddi is back, the protagonist of a
tale whose pillars and roof, were it a house, would be made of thriller
material, but whose bricks and pipes would be of the purest, blackest
noir. I will reveal nothing, in order not to ruin the surprise, of
the structure of the thriller, constructed around the classic time
frame of “It's day, now…” interspersed with flashback that uncover
what happened “before” that which is occuring “now”. All I will say
is that, in this noir mire, pushers, junkies, informants, political
extremists, beggars, and ambiguous cops move… And imams whose aim
is unclear, talking of God in order to spread hatred more easily
in the impressionable minds of young immigrants, ill at ease in an
Italy that is not always straightforward, where everybody seems to
vie with each other in their attempts to do the wrong thing at the
wrong time. No, the Italy that Camarca depicts is not pretty. Dirty,
pulsating, poisoned by tensions that a political sphere that is ever
more turned in on itself can no longer sort out or cure. This novel
is, however, very beautiful, recommended for die-hard racists incapable
of looking at people who are different from us, as well as for compassionate
souls who believe that couscous and multiethnic festivals are a panacea
for integration.
Giancarlo Narciso, Incontro
a Daunanda, Dario Flaccovio Editore, 2006, 368 pages
Giancarlo
Narciso is another one who doesn't mess around where borders are
concerned. In his lifetime he has crossed many, following the instinct
and the irregular trajectory of a wanderer's life, looking for adventure,
and a way of escaping a daily routine that was too restrictive. Kathmandu,
San Francisco, Mexico City, Singapore… A
trajectory that couldn't help but become intertwined with the art
of writing, in which Narciso has already shown his worth, winning,
for example, a Tedeschi prize for best detective story in 1998 with
Singapore Sling. And it is none other than Rodolfo Capitani, the protagonist
of that novel, that we meet again in Encounter
at Daunanda / Incontro
a Daunanda, which has just reached the shelves. We are on the
Indonesian island of Lombok, near Bali but less touristic, even though
it is more beautiful, where the globetrotter Rodolfo (perhaps the
author's alter ego to some extent…) meets a beautiful girl, an Italian
just like him, which whom he begins an affair. But after a few days,
the girl disappears without any explanation. And the only thing Rodolfo
can do is to look for her… A classic spur, seen before, that Narciso
puts to original use, blending a genuine exoticism, the bitterly
ironic reflections of a sick old dog who believes in (almost) nothing
any more, a love for a natural landscape that has been pillaged by
man, and a complex and murky noir plot, in which the theme of ‘the
double' is of particular relevance. The girl in danger, another girl
in danger (or dangerous), an eco-warrior out for revenge, the head
of the paramilitary forces devoted to violence and abuse of power,
a rich Italian industrialist… The tension grows slowly, in a manner
that might appear casual, until it erupts in an explosion of violence
rendered more disturbing still by the beauty of the landscape. It
is difficult, in the end, to talk of winners and losers. Perhaps
we can only talk about survivors…
A good novel, already translated in Germany,
by an author who lives on Lombok half of the year (for the other
six months, he lives on the shores of Lake Garda, in Italy), and
who takes advantage of it to write a series of adventure and spy
novels set in Asia for Mondadori's SEGRETISSIMO (Top Secret) series.
Published under the nom de
plume (or rather nom de guerre …) of Jack Morisco…
Stephen Gunn (Stefano
Di Marino), Fuga da El Diablo, TEA, 2006 (ristampa), 278
pages
The
borders between genres were erased some time ago, or at least are
far less dangerous, not only between detective stories and noir fiction,
but also with respect to thrillers, horror, fantasy, etc. Given up
for dead towards the end of the 20 th century, the spy story has
found a new lease of life in the shadow of the events which have
signalled the birth of the new century (and millennium), but also
treading a ‘hybrid' path between genres. One of these ‘new lives'
has taken shape through the so-called ‘Foreign Legion' of the Italian-style
spy story, a definition which refers both to the fact that the authors
of these novels, all Italians, write under foreign pseudonyms (see
the case given above), and to the fact that the founder of this ‘commando'
group of authors, Stefano di Marino, chose an ex-Legionnaire as his
central character. In over a decade of existence, Chance Renard,
known as The Professional, has already undertaken about twenty missions
steeped in violence, intrigue, sex, and double-crossing (the whole
thing absolutely untrue, and the whole thing incredibly credible…)
Taking advantage of the republication in chronological order of a
series initially destined for newspaper kiosks, we plunge into the
lush pages of Fuga da El Diablo / Escape
from El Diablo,
and we are immediately in the heart of the action. A Jamaican drug
trafficker who needs to be transferred to Miami is handed over to
Chance, a freelance agent who works for the American DEA; but things
start to go wrong at once, the plane crashes and the survivors find
themselves on the God forsaken island of El Diablo, an island penitentiary,
a kind of Caribbean Alcatraz, where a revolt is taking place. Here
Chance, The Professional, runs into an old acquaintance… Then the
flashback begins… Fights between Colombian and Jamaican gangs, santeros and
Voodoo priests, the intrigue of a deviant branch of the CIA, cinematographic
shoot-outs and chase sequences… Full of references to entire strands
of action cinema and narratives (a trend that was not invented by
Quentin Tarantino), Fuga da El Diablo crosses spy story
with exoticism, the western, the prison movie, the list goes on… In
this new edition each novel (this is the fourth in the series), as
well as having undergone revisions and slight alterations, is enriched
by a brief postface which opens the door of the writer's workshop
to whomever may be interested in discovering its secrets. Though
not all will be revealed. Looking forward to the next installment,
of course…
Angelo Petrella, Cane
rabbioso, Meridiano Zero, 2006, 89 pages
There
are also ethical borders. And in only ninety pages, the Narrating
I of this short novel, or long story, crosses them, or rather knocks
them down, all of them, absolutely all of them. Murder, sex, drugs,
corruption… A lot, everything,
maybe too much. Against a backdrop of a Naples in which it would
seem that nothing has been left to be saved (can noir fiction be
optimistic?). A pulp novel, or rather ultra-pulp. But the secret
that rescues everything is the writing, dry, rhythmic, full of
blows and effects, with the pace of urban rap, gangsta rap. Except
that here the gangsta is a cop, a pig. The filth. A guardian of
the peace. Who shoots like a killer, and growls like a Rabid
Dog / Cane rabbioso.
The kind of cop you hope (without necessarily believing it) only
exists in stories like this one. You'll read it in a flash but it
stays in your mind. Dirty, nasty, without hope. A putrid bad lieutenant, à la Abel
Ferrara…
Felice Muolo, Complanare
Putta, Edizioni Il Filo, 2006, 109 pages
Putta
Road / Complanare Putta is
not a border road, at least not in a geographical sense. Lost in
the heat of Puglia, it's just any old accursed road that becomes
a border, a border between life (for some) and death (for others).
Another southern Italian story, another short novel, which progresses
by twisting round on itself, as though unable to choose between
slowing down, lingering over the details of a look, a beach, a
thought, and sudden bursts of violence, very brief and cutting.
It is a ‘strange' writing style,
which I would define as wild, coarse, at times ‘unpleasant'. A naïve
writing style… or perhaps much more astute than it seems. Around
the road, the Hotel Agave, and an authentically imaginary Puglia,
Lucio, Ermanno, Nicola, Valeria, Rosalba, and Lyung, the Vietnamese
girl up for adoption, who, from afar, innocently influences the mechanics
of the story… Men and women looking for love or for sex, stolen embraces,
with the illusion of happiness, or of an acceptable substitute. And
death, the eternal croupier ready to bring the wheel of fate to a
halt… Perhaps not everybody will enjoy it. I recommend it to lovers
of curiosity, of that which is imperfect, not over-polished or tried
and tested. I await the second volume of the (planned) trilogy with
baited breath, and since it is a small, perhaps very small, publishing
house, I will also give details of its website.
www.ilfiloonline.it
Enjoy your summer… and happy reading.
