Saturday, February 09, 2008

The Italian Crime Novel - Mafia No Where in Sight!

The ANNOTICO Report

This is a golden era for Italian crime fiction.Carlo Lucarelli, Niccolr Ammaniti, Giancarlo De Cataldo, and Andrea Camilleri, the author of the superb Inspector Montalbano series, are just a few of the names that feature in the European bestseller lists. And then there's the Italy-based foreigners - such as Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon, who offer readers the Italian sleuths, Aurelio Zen and Guido Brunetti, respectively.

Since England gave the world detective fiction and America gave the world Noir writing, there's a certain amount of 'selling ice to Eskimos' about Italian writers' success in Anglo-Saxon countries. But we also bring our own touch to things. We don't do whodunits, for a start. We aren't interested in who the killer is, so much as examining what sort of society and institutions help create that killer.

The Anglo-Saxon crime thrillers are all about the triumph and restoration of order, of 'Elementary, dear Watson' deductions, of everything being resolved. By contrast, the modern Italian equivalent is about psychological and societal disorder; it's rooted in reality and maps the evil and corruption in politics and society, without offering resolution. For Italian writers, it's utopian to think that every crime can be cleared up, Agatha Christie-style.

Things have changed as rapidly in New York as they have in Italy, where the traditional, family-oriented, Godfather-esque model is largely silent and it controls nowhere near the amount of territory that it used to. In the major cities, we have mob penetration from the Russian, Chinese and Eastern European Mafias instead.

The Insider: My Part in Italy's Crime Renaissance

Telegraph.co.uk - United Kingdom

Giancarlo De Cataldo

Judge in Italian Criminal Courts, and Author

February 10, 2008

...I've heard all sorts of ludicrous defences in my 25 years as a judge in the Italian criminal court, in Rome - though the cases I cover are mostly grisly. And they've been a major inspiration for my other career as a crime novelist....

My best-known book, "Romanzo Criminale" (adapted into a movie in 2005), is about the Banda della Magliana, the organised crime gang that held sway over Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, and many of whose leaders I tried....

Anyway, my writings, even when inspired by real-life events, are ultimately fiction. Even after trying a case in court, there are still always gaps in the story. For example, I suspect the influence of the Freemasons on the Banda della Magliana has never fully been revealed.

But suspicions, suspicions, suspicions. We'll never know every last reason or motivation for why a crime is committed, or every last link in a chain of actions. And so, as a writer, I inevitably fill in the historical blanks with fantasy.

My books are just a small part of what is now a golden era for Italian crime fiction. Carlo Lucarelli, Niccolr Ammaniti and Andrea Camilleri, the author of the superb Inspector Montalbano series, are just a few of the names that feature in the European bestseller lists. And then there's the Italy-based foreigners - such as Michael Dibdin and Donna Leon, who offer readers the Italian sleuths, Aurelio Zen and Guido Brunetti, respectively.

Since England gave the world detective fiction and America gave the world Noir writing, there's a certain amount of 'selling ice to Eskimos' about Italian writers' success in Anglo-Saxon countries. But we also bring our own touch to things. We don't do whodunits, for a start. We aren't interested in who the killer is, so much as examining what sort of society and institutions help create that killer.

We're all good friends, too, regularly meeting for dinner or at crime-writing conventions. We were excited to be asked to one at Columbia University, in New York, last November, and to visit the home of so many great Italian-American crime stories. But we were crushed to find that there was little left of the Italian Brooklyn that Martin Scorsese depicted in Mean Streets. It's now a 'Little Odessa', overrun by Russians.

Things have changed as rapidly in New York as they have in Italy, where the Mafia has now become the Mafias. The traditional, family-oriented, Godfather-esque model is largely silent and it controls nowhere near the amount of territory that it used to. In the major cities, we have mob penetration from the Russian, Chinese and Eastern European Mafias instead.

It's a bleak picture, and Italian crime writing reflects that. Not that it's all about gangs and bosses. The most disturbing case I've tried was of a father-of-three who had lost his job just after losing his wife to cancer. Tormented by visions of his wife's ghost saying, 'Join me, and bring the girls with you', he stabbed his three young daughters to death and then set his house on fire, but his neighbour saved him. We sentenced him to 19 years in prison, but his real punishment was living with what he had done.

Yet, for all the bleakness, there are still moments of macabre humour. I remember trying one defendant, a university drop-out from a good family, who had chosen to kill his parents rather than admit that he hadn't got his degree. He wrapped their bodies in bin-liners, calling the police two days later and claiming he had just returned home to find his mother and father dead.

Heavily Edited.

· Giancarlo De Cataldo is the editor of 'Crimini', a collection of short stories by Italian crime writers (Bitter Lemon, #8.99).

· He was talking to Alastair Smart

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/02/10/sv_insider110.xml

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