I Will Have Vengeance

A Commissario Ricciardi Mystery by Maurizio De Giovanni

The Naples waterfront in the 1930s, the era in which
De Giovanni set his Commissario Ricciardi novels

An intriguing detective story set in the dark days when Mussolini ruled Italy, I Will Have Vengeance is peopled by believable characters who live their lives in realistic settings.

But the novel is by a contemporary crime writer, Maurizio De Giovanni, and was published as recently as 2007.The setting is Naples in the year 1931 and De Giovanni manages to recreate the atmosphere of a city where poverty and wealth exist side by side with each other and officials are constantly looking over their shoulders in fear of Il Duce.

Much of the action takes place in Teatro di San Carlo, the city’s opera house. The story revolves around the world of opera, which De Giovanni obviously knows and understands well.

Commissario Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi, who is from a noble background, is sent to investigate a sudden death at the theatre. He is a loner and remains aloof from most of the other officers, but has the reputation of being a brilliant detective.

The big thing the reader has to get his head round is that this enigmatic police officer can see dead people. From being a child, he had been able to see the dead and it has set him apart from everyone else. As the author explains: ‘Not all of them and not for long: only those who had died violently, and only for a period of time that revealed extreme emotion, the sudden energy of their final thoughts.’

Maurizio De Giovanni wrote his
first stories while working in a bank

But by the end of the book, I had come to terms with Ricciardi’s special gift, having become more interested in following the story and seeing how he solved the case.

The greatest tenor the world has ever known, Arnaldo Vezzi, has been found dead in his dressing room at Teatro di San Carlo. Ricciardi and his loyal deputy, Maione, are quickly on the scene and immediately clash with the director of the theatre when they insist on setting up a professional police investigation.

Vezzi was adored by millions, including Il Duce, but is hated by everyone in the theatre and in his personal life because of his arrogance and bad temper. Ricciardi’s boss, the Vice Questore, wants a quick result, even if it is not the right result, but Ricciardi insists on investigating thoroughly in order to bring the actual killer to justice. It is a compelling story and is told brilliantly by De Giovanni.

The setting of Naples in 1931 is very realistically portrayed because De Giovanni remembers his parents sharing their memories of the city before World War II with him.

De Giovanni was born in 1958 in Naples. He worked in a bank and wrote stories as a hobby. His colleagues at the bank decided to enter one of his stories in a writing competition for unpublished writers without his knowledge and his short story, I vivi e i morti – The Living and the Dead, set in the 1930s and featuring Commissario Ricciardi, won the competition. This inspired him to write his first novel, Le lacrime del pagliaccio – The Tears of the Clown - which was later republished in English as I Will Have Vengeance – The Winter of Commissario Ricciardi.

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, where much of
the action in I Will Have Vengeance takes place

He followed this with Blood Curse – The Springtime of Commissario Ricciardi in 2008, Everyone in Their Place – The Summer of Commissario Ricciardi in 2009 and The Day of the Dead – The Autumn of Commissario Ricciardi in 2010. To date he has written 13 Commissario Ricciardi novels.

The author has created two fictional detectives, Commissario Ricciardi, who works in 1930s Naples, and Ispettore Lojacono, who has been transferred to present day Naples from his home town of Agrigento in Sicily, after being accused of associating with the Mafia.

In 2012, De Giovanni ventured into the noir genre with The Crocodile, which featured the first appearance by Ispettore Lojacono.

He was then inspired by the 87th Precinct series by Ed McBain to write a police procedural, The Bastards of Pizzofalcone. His five Pizzofalcone novels have now been made into a television series by RAI, starring Alessandro Gassmann as Ispettore Lojacono.

De Giovanni’s novels have now been translated into English, Spanish, Catalan, French and German and have sold well over a million copies throughout Europe.

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