Thursday, March 08, 2018

Four Italian Crime Fiction Writers Profiled

Crime Fiction in Other Climes 


Part II


I had wanted to break the Italian story into three acts but find myself hard pressed by the scarcity of information in English on the subject, for one thing. And, for another, an unwieldy profusion of Italian names in the genre popping up that is hard to process, given the first constraint.  It is thus that Part III will offer Borscht rather than more pasta.

One notices that a recurrent theme in Italian crime fiction is the Mafia or gang violence and the ghost of the Mussolini era


Andrea Camilleri, cassatina sulla terrazza a Marinella - by SerStelitano (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons


If Camilleri's fictional Montalbano delights in food, Sandrone Dazieri who surfaced for me, thanks to crimefictionlover, once worked as cook. So, food and crime fiction go hand in glove in the Italian crime book, it appears!

Sandrone's signature seems to be that of using himself in the work. There is talk of a 'doppelgänger' and a main character is also named Sandrone.

I imagine that the author's work as script and comics writer has delectable influence on his writing. However, it is hard to find much about the author or the books, in English, online. 


Video promo of Sandrone's Kill The Father


I'm also delighted to be able to offer you an excerpt.

And a preview of another of his novels that you can have by clicking on the link in the book cover below.

And the excerpt.
doppelgänger

Another Italian author in the genre is the multifaceted doppelgänger Giorgio Faletti who has turned his hand to many things, including car racing. His first book, though, was in the humour genre. Will that vein infect his thrillers, I wonder. In any case he has also acted in films and TV shows.

Here is a song of his: 



Preview one of his novels using the book cover below.


Alas, that is all I have for you but there exist more than a couple of his novels in English that sound promising. One thing is for sure - there are a lot of serial killers in the books!

Let's profile one more:

Detective turned crime author Michele Giuttari explains how his lead character is himself

Himself an ex-cop , Michele Giuttari shares the above trait with Sandrone Dazieri, whom we have seen above.




His Death Under a Tuscan Sun has a nice review at the same journal.
a sultry and atmospheric antidote to the various Scandinavian crime scribes

And, with Giancarlo de Cataldo, my search peters out. There is really very little to say or share about the many Italian writers in the crime genre, merely because the web is English-biased!  Besides the preview below, there is a meaty read on the web.


The good news is that Netflix has it - at least that should be true by now:


Arrivederci for the moment while I sniff out some Russian crime novel writers!

No comments: