People who enjoy reading crime fiction and also love Italy are always
delighted to discover a good crime novel set in an interesting location there.
Among the best authors who write crime novels in English that are set in Italy are Michael Dibdin, Donna Leon, Tomothy Holme and Magdalen Nabb.
But thanks to good translators, we are now able to read the works of
Italian crime writers as well.
The Sicilian writer Andrea Camilleri is perhaps the most famous, but
also highly recommended are Michele Giuttari, Valerio Varesi and Marco Vichi. to
name but a few.
And it is always a joy to discover less well-known writers, as well as
writers not normally known for books set in Italy, who have chosen to use the
country as a backdrop for just one novel.
The range of crime novels set in Italy and the variety of locations they
feature is constantly increasing.
Translations of crime novels by Italian writers are now much more
readily available, for the first time making these books accessible to people
who can’t read Italian.
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The historic cities and rugged landscapes of Sicily provide
the backdrop for Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano novels |
The late Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series set in Sicily has now been
translated into more than 30 different languages and a dubbed version of the
television adaptation has been shown on British television, which has helped to
increase the interest in and demand for crime novels with an Italian setting.
Reading crime novels in translation is fascinating because it offers a
window on day to day life in Italy, enabling us to see how people spend their
time and what their preoccupations are as well as what wine they choose when
they go to their local bar.
So what makes Italy such a good setting for this genre? Many people like
Italy for the weather, the scenery, the architecture, the art, the culture and
let’s not forget the food and the wine. But a good crime novel set in Italy should be more than just an
opportunity for armchair travel by the reader. The setting has to play an
important part in the novel.
A lot of writers are fascinated with Italy’s justice system and the much
talked about corruption in the country because it can give them more freedom
when they are plotting their novels.
Italy provides writers with the opportunity for ambiguity and non
resolution at the end of the book, whereas traditionally readers have come to
expect a credible, but tidy finish at the end of a book set in Britain.
For example, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L Sayers would allude to the
fact that the murderer would hang at the end of their books because at the time
they were written they thought this would provide a satisfactory resolution for
the reader.
But there is often no neat conclusion at the end of a crime novel set in
Italy. Andrea Camilleri has said that in Italy it can take years to find
someone guilty of a crime and then there is often no appropriate punishment at
the end of it all. Italians are big believers in hidden and ulterior motives
and even when someone is arrested for a crime they think this won’t necessarily
be the end of it.
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Rome is the home city of Michael Dibdin's central
character, the detective Aurelio Zen |
Michael Dibdin uses the Italian word dietrologia to describe
this. It means the facts behind the facts, or conspiracy theory, and it is
something Italians have no difficulty believing in. This makes Italy an ideal background for modern writers who want to make
the investigation of lesser importance and concentrate more on the
personalities of the victim, witnesses and investigators that they have
created.
The perspective of the outsider is a popular device in crime fiction and
so having a foreign visitor in Italy as a central character often works well.
It enables the protagonist to cast a cold eye on the society that surrounds him
and his detachment is often the key to his success.
This can also work well if the character is Italian but far from
home. For example with Commissario Aurelio Zen in Michael Dibdin’s novels there
is a reason he feels like an outsider in Rome, which the reader eventually
finds out about.
In some novels Italian police officers are working far away from their
home town for operational reasons, such as Magdalen Nabb’s Maresciallo
Guarnaccia, a Sicilian in Florence and Timothy Holme’s Commissario Peroni, a
Neapolitan in northern Italy.
Modern crime novelists have almost become travel writers, because they
describe their settings so well. This is because to the writer the location is
a character in the story in its own right.
At the very least a modern crime novel set in Italy can take you on a
trip to an unfamiliar city. Crime writers tell it the way it is. Unlike most
travel writers they will tell you things you didn’t know and maybe would prefer
not to know about a particular place.
They will tell you about day to day life, what people talk about in the
bars, how the place smells, how the transport system works, or doesn’t work, in
some cases.
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Donna Leon sets her Commissario Brunetti novels amid
the unique splendours of Venice |
If you are lucky, as a little bonus, they will also tell you what dishes
to order for lunch and the best restaurants to go to for an authentic
experience of the local cuisine, as in Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti novels
set in Venice.
But good crime writers do not forget the rules of the genre and that
plot is of paramount importance. Readers expect to be provided with clues, suspects, and motives. They
want to be entertained by a story that allows them to sit in an armchair and
try to work out the solution. The characters have to be plausible and their
motivation for what they do needs to be credible.
Most of all, the book needs to have an authentic background that the
reader can believe in, which is why the use of the setting is so important.
The crime, or detective, novel dates back to the mid 19th century. One
of the earliest detective novels, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen
Poe, was published in 1841 and then Wilkie Collins wrote The Woman in White in
1860.
In 1887 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave the genre fresh impetus by creating
Sherlock Holmes. His skill in detection consisted of logical deduction based on
minute details that had escaped the notice of others.
The classical detective novel was at the height of its popularity in
Britain between about 1920 and 1940, the era of four famous women writers,
Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham and Ngaio Marsh.
Their novels provided entertainment that relied upon the reader’s
interest in a logical pursuit of clues honestly put before them.
Books by these ladies are still regularly borrowed from public libraries
and made into films and yet publishers and literary critics consistently claim
this form of the genre has had its day.
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The atmospheric city of Florence is the setting for the
dark novels of English author Magdalen Nabb |
The contemporary crime novel, or detective novel, shifts the emphasis
from the clues to the characters involved in the story. It is the unveiling of
the different layers of personality that lies at the root of the plot rather than
just logical deduction. The personality of the detective is a vital ingredient as it is he or
she whose insights produce the solution to the puzzle.
Writers who achieved this transition well include P D James, Ruth Rendell, H
R F Keating, Colin Dexter and Reginald Hill.
Their books are more likely to involve professional policemen, who carry
out thorough detective work rather than just relying on sudden flashes of
intuition,
In Italy, people call a crime story un romanzo giallo, because since the
1930s crime novels have usually had yellow covers.
The earliest Italian mystery novels are thought to be Il Mio Cadavere
(My Corpse) and La Cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Woman from Sorrento) both
written by Francesco Mastriani in 1852.
Other Italian writers then began experimenting with the genre and in
1910 there was an important development when The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
were published in Il Corriere della Sera.
In 1929 Mondadori established their libri gialli series and novels by
famous foreign writers, including Agatha Christie, were published in Italian.
The first Italian writer to be published in the series was Alessandro Varaldo
with Il Sette Bello (Seven is Beautiful) in 1931 featuring police inspector
Ascanio Bonich. This is considered to be the first Italian detective story.
The fascist Government asked Mondadori to ensure that at least 20 per
cent of its literary production was by Italian writers and as a result more
Italians started to write gialli and to imitate foreign authors.
But by 1941 Mussolini had decided he didn’t like the genre and told
Mondadori to stop publishing gialli for moral reasons. He thought they would
corrupt young people.
After the war, Mondadori began publishing foreign writers again, but
gradually more Italian crime writers began to emerge and now hundreds are
regularly published, including best selling novelists such as Andrea Camilleri.
Sadly, Camilleri died last year, but he has left us the wonderful gift
of Montalbano, who, like Sherlock Holmes, often notices the little details that
other people miss.
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