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qatsiBook Review: Carte Blanche, by Carlo Lucarelli
This had been on my to-read list for a long time. I caught the later episodes in the TV adaptation when it was broadcast on BBC Four, but missed the earlier parts (I may have been on holiday; in any case, I neither recorded them nor caught them on iPlayer at the time). Picking up half-way through, there was evidently some back-story about the main character and Mussolini, and I hoped this might clear it up. In fact it doesn't; perhaps it was an invention of the TV adaptation.
Discussed in an interesting preface, the author takes inspiration from an interview with a policeman who carried out his duties for several Italian regimes over a forty-year period with little consideration beyond the technical aspect of the job. This is a slim volume, set in 1945, in northern Italy. Inspector De Luca has recently been transferred from political duties to normal policing, and has the case of a murder of a local Fascist Party figure on his hands. He is sceptical of any realistic prospect of investigation, but to his surprise, the local party organisation offers its full support - so long as he reaches the right conclusions, which are laid out before him with little subtlety. Still, he is unconvinced; other, later, apparently related deaths, make no sense, and practical co-operation across the authorities, and by individuals, is thin on the ground.
De Luca clearly thinks of himself as an honest cop, doing his best; it comes as a surprise to him to hear that he may be on a target list for the rapidly approaching partisans. As he unravels the case, it's clear that it has been used as a pretext for other activities or score-settling. There's an air of Maigret about his philosophical approach, but he appears unrepentant yet not without ambivalence over what he may have done in the recent past.
This had been on my to-read list for a long time. I caught the later episodes in the TV adaptation when it was broadcast on BBC Four, but missed the earlier parts (I may have been on holiday; in any case, I neither recorded them nor caught them on iPlayer at the time). Picking up half-way through, there was evidently some back-story about the main character and Mussolini, and I hoped this might clear it up. In fact it doesn't; perhaps it was an invention of the TV adaptation.
Discussed in an interesting preface, the author takes inspiration from an interview with a policeman who carried out his duties for several Italian regimes over a forty-year period with little consideration beyond the technical aspect of the job. This is a slim volume, set in 1945, in northern Italy. Inspector De Luca has recently been transferred from political duties to normal policing, and has the case of a murder of a local Fascist Party figure on his hands. He is sceptical of any realistic prospect of investigation, but to his surprise, the local party organisation offers its full support - so long as he reaches the right conclusions, which are laid out before him with little subtlety. Still, he is unconvinced; other, later, apparently related deaths, make no sense, and practical co-operation across the authorities, and by individuals, is thin on the ground.
De Luca clearly thinks of himself as an honest cop, doing his best; it comes as a surprise to him to hear that he may be on a target list for the rapidly approaching partisans. As he unravels the case, it's clear that it has been used as a pretext for other activities or score-settling. There's an air of Maigret about his philosophical approach, but he appears unrepentant yet not without ambivalence over what he may have done in the recent past.