Gianrico Carofiglio in conversation with Sheldon Zenner

 

Gianrico Carofiglio in conversation with Sheldon Zenner, a former federal prosecutor and a defense attorney in the United States. They will discuss Carofiglio's new novel as well as his career path from anti-Mafia prosecutor to full-time writer.

Join them for a stimulating and lively conversation as they cross the globe – Gianrico Carofiglio will join us from Italy and Sheldon Zenner from Chicago – to discuss The Measure of Time, Carofiglio's inspiration and writing life, and an inside look at the intricacies of the Italian justice system from two brilliant legal minds.

it’s going to be hosted virtually in NYC but UK residents can watch it here in the UK from 6pm onwards on 6th May. It’s being co-hosted by the Italia Cultural Institutes on both sides of the pond.

The event is free by registration is required through this link.

The Measure of Time, translated by Howard Curtis, is the latest book in Carfofiglio's Guido Guerrieri crime series (just published in spring 2021 by Bitter Lemon Press).

One spring afternoon, defence attorney Guerrieri is confronted with an unexpected spectre from his past. In her youth, Lorenza had been a beautiful and unpredictable girl with dazzling charm. A changed woman faces him in his office that day. The ensuing years have ravaged her appearance and embittered her mind. As if that weren't enough, her son Jacopo, a small-time delinquent, stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. Her trial lawyer has died, so, for the appeal, she turns to Guerrieri as her last hope. Guido is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza's son, nor does he have fond memories of the way their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth. His old friend Carmelo Tancredi, a retired police inspector, and his girlfriend, the charming investigator Annapaola Doria are once again by his side. A masterful, compassionate novel, striking a balance between a straightforward trial story -some say the purest distillation of human experience - and the sad notes of time as it passes and exhausts itself.

Books to Look Forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

 January 2021

The story is set in Uruguay, it starts in a Montevideo prison where Diego waits for his lawyer, the slick Dr Antinucci, always raybanned, chain-smoking, never frisked by the prison guards. Diego, betrayed by his partner in crime, was arrested for kidnapping a businessman. But charges will not be pressed. The businessman and his wife have described Diego as duped by his partner, certainly no master criminal, so he will be let out. But Antonucci has plans for him, a favour must be returned for his surprising freedom, he must join forces with the psychopath El Roto and hold up an armoured truck in Montevideo. The mad and hilarious caper includes the robbery of course which degenerates into appalling violence, a few murders, and the general bungling of affairs by all the men involved. It is the belittled women, including Police Inspector Lima, who end up the true heroines of the story. This seemingly classic lowlife crime story has a powerful message: never, ever underestimate the women. All told with excoriating wit and humour from the Rio de la Plata. Crocodile Tears is by Mercedes Rosende.

February 2021

The Foreign Girls is by Sergio Olguin. Veronica Rosenthal has retreated to a cousin's remote cottage in the province of Tucuman, to recuperate from the traumatic events in The Fragility of Bodies. She befriends two female tourists -an Italian and a Norwegian-- invites them to stay and starts a sexual relationship with one of them. After a party they attend together, Veronica travels on alone but days later discovers that the women have been murdered. Suspicion falls on a local Umbanda priest, but Veronica starts to uncover a web of corruption, abuse and femicide in which government, wealthy landowners and a high-ranking official from the Argentina's 'Dirty War' are all implicated. Veronica's investigation, with its unforeseen political dimensions, has alarmed new enemies who will try to stop her at all cost.

March 2021

The Measure of Time is by Gianrico Carofiglio. One spring afternoon, defence attorney Guerrieri is confronted with an unexpected spectre from his past. In her youth, Lorenza had been a beautiful and unpredictable girl with dazzling charm. A changed woman faces him in his office that day. The ensuing years have ravaged her appearance and embittered her mind. As if that weren't enough, her son Jacopo, a small-time delinquent, stands convicted of the first-degree murder of a local drug dealer. Her trial lawyer has died, so, for the appeal, she turns to Guerrieri as her last hope. Guido is not convinced of the innocence of Lorenza's son, nor does he have fond memories of the way their relationship ended two decades earlier. Nevertheless, he accepts the case; perhaps to pay a melancholy homage to the ghosts of his youth. His old friend Carmelo Tancredi, a retired police inspector, and his girlfriend, the charming investigator Annapaola Doria are once again by his side. A masterful, compassionate novel, striking a balance between a straightforward trial story -some say the purest distillation of human experience - and the sad notes of time as it passes and exhausts itself.

April 2021

Things are looking bad for disgraced spy August Drummond. In emotional free fall after the death of his wife, fired for a series of unprecedented security breaches... and now his neighbor on the flight to Istanbul won't stop talking. The only thing keeping him sane is the hunch that there's something not quite right about the nervous young man several rows ahead - a hunch that is confirmed when August watches him throw away directions to an old European cemetery seconds before being detained by Turkish police. A reckless August decides to go to the cemetery, where he meets a mysterious figure from the dark heart of the Islamic State and quickly finds himself drawn into a shadowy plot to murder an Iranian scientist in Istanbul. But nothing is what it seems, and before long August realises he has gone too far to turn back. As he struggles to break free from the clutches of Islamic State and play off British intelligence against their Turkish counterparts, he will find his resourcefulness, ingenuity and courage tested to the very limit of what he can endure. How To Betray Your Country by James Wolff. 

June 2021

The Transparency of Time' by Leonardo Padura sees the Cuban investigator pursuing a mystery spanning centuries of occult history. Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favour of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money. Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santeria appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla-a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true provenance of the statue. Through vignettes from the life of a Catalan peasant named Antoni Barral, who appears throughout history in different guises-as a shepherd during the Spanish Civil War, as vassal to a feudal lord-we trace the Madonna to present-day Cuba. With Barral serving as Conde's alter ego, unstuck in time, and Conde serving as the author's, we are treated to a panorama of history, and reminded of the impossibility of ever remaining on its sidelines, no matter how obscure we may think our places in the action.

July 2021

It is the end of October, the city of Basel is grey and wet. It could be December. It is just after midnight when Police Inspector Peter Hunkeler, on his way home and slightly worse for wear, spots old man Hardy sitting on a bench under a street light. He wants to smoke a cigarette with him, but the usually very loquacious Hardy is silent-his throat a gaping wound. Turns out he was first strangled and his left earlobe slit, the diamond stud he usually wore there missing. The media and the police come quickly to the same conclusion: Hardy's murder was the work of a gang of Albanian drug smugglers. But for Hunkeler that seems too obvious a resolution. After all, Barabara Amsler, a prostitute, was also recently found strangled, her ear slit. He follows his own intuition and methods which lead him deep into a seedy world of bars and night clubs. More ominously, he soon must face the consequences of certain events in recent Swiss history that those in power would prefer to keep far from the public eye. The Basel Killings is by Hansjörg Schneider.

BOOK REVIEW: THE COLD SUMMER, by Gianrico Carofiglio

THE COLD SUMMER

by Gianrico Carofiglio

Bitter Lemon Press, £8.99 , Sept 13th 2018

Reviewer: Michael Jecks

This is not the first book I have read by Gianrico Carofiglio. Some years ago I picked up another of his novels, intrigued by the promise of a story deeply informed by the writer’s experiences.

Why? Because Gianrico Carofiglio is no ordinary crime writer. He is a man who spent most of his working life as a prosecutor specializing in organised crime. In 2007 he was appointed as advisor to the Italian government’s anti-Mafia committee, and the following year he became a Senator.

So not a run-of-the-mill writer, then. And when you read his books, you can feel the depth of his knowledge, but also the deep humanity of the writer.

This story takes the reader back to the 1990s when there was a spate of chilling attacks on the justice system in Italy. Giovanni Falcone, his wife and several police officers were murdered by a massive bomb; a couple of months later, Paolo Borsellino and five more police were killed when a car bomb was set off as they passed. Falcone and Borsellino were enthusiastic anti-Mafia prosecutors, and posed a significant threat to the Sicilian families. The public outcry at these two atrocities was immediate - and the crackdown in their aftermath effective. Those responsible were identified, arrested, prosecuted, and convicted.

However, the Mafia violence was not unique to Sicily. There were gang wars between other Mafia gangs up and down Italy. This book takes the reader to Apulia, where the fighting was as brutal as anywhere.

I began reading this book immediately after reading a very different story indeed, and I read the first page with a real sense of gratitude. Whereas the previous book had been more of a character study set in a vaguely criminal environment, there were many aspect that I could simply not come to terms with. Within three pages of THE COLD SUMMER I felt I had been wrapped in a comfort blanket. This was a crime book written by a man who knew his subject and how to plot a story. I knew who the main character was, I was fully convinced by the way he was depicted, and I was very content with his behaviour. It’s an excellent beginning to a crime story - I recommend it.

To summarise: Pietro Fenoglio is a local officer in the Carabinieri. He has recently been left by his wife, and is trying to come to terms with his new status as a single man, while hoping she will return to him. But there is a brutal turf war being fought in the area around Bari, and he is soon thrown into the midst of the fighting as a Mafia boss’s son is kidnapped.

The thought of an ordinary criminal risking his life by kidnapping a Mafiosi’s son is hard to accept. This must be a symptom of the gang war. Surely only a suicidal gangster would try to take on one of the most senior Mafiosi in the area? Rumours abound, and Fenoglio begins to have an idea who is responsible.

But then the man suspected of the kidnapping surrenders himself. The boy is found dead, but the suspect denies killing him. The police are forced into an investigation in which those investigating are forced to look at their own attitudes and behaviours. In a morally confusing world, the police have to look at their own motives, their own actions.

The story is split into three “Acts”. The first is the setup of the story, the kidnap, the search for the killer; second comes a part in which we are brought into the interrogation of the suspect, with the interview transcripts interspersed with the continuing story; finally the story returns to a straightforward linear path, hurtling towards the resolution.

This is not like a Michael Connelly, or Harlan Coben. There are not the sudden imaginative twists and turns that you expect from an American master; however, this story is convincing at a much deeper level. It feels less like a story constructed by an author, and more like an autobiographical narration, a man speaking of his memories of a time in the recent past, speaking about his own experiences of such investigations, and who has had to confront his own demons in the battle against organised crime. Carofiglio doesn’t resort to devious plot twists to establish his characters and storyline - he doesn’t need to. His knowledge of his subject is deep enough to imbue his writing with conviction.

I would highly recommend this book.

Books to Look Forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

When Judge Larocca is the subject of corruption allegations, Guerrieri goes against his better instincts and takes the case. After all they had been at school and university together. Helped by Annapaola Doria, a motorbike-riding bisexual private detective who keeps a baseball bat to hand for sticky situations, he discovers the judge's links to the mafia. Larocca is blind to the immorality of his actions but Annapaola makes sure that justice is done, perhaps not in the most orthodox way. Of course Guerrieri cannot stop himself from falling for Annapaola's exotic charms. The novel takes the form of a suspenseful legal thriller but it is much more. It is the story of a judge who , to quote Brothers Karamazov, "...lies to himself and listens to his own lies, so gets to the point where he can no longer distinguish the truth, either in himself or around himself." A man always looking to justify his evil and corrupt behaviour, perhaps an apposite metaphor for Italy itself. A Fine Line is by Gianrico Carofiglio and is due to be published in April 2016.

Betty Boo is by Claudia Pinerio and is due to be published in January 2016.  When a Buenos Aires industrialist is found dead at his home in an exclusive gated community, the novelist Nurit Iscar - Betty Boo to her admirers-is invited to cover the story by her former lover, now the editor of a national newspaper. Working with the paper's veteran, but recently demoted, crime reporter and his hapless junior, Nurit uncovers a trail of murders that will lead all three to the highest echelons of power in Argentina. In Betty Boo Claudia Pineiro combines a chilling story of murderous revenge with a warm and funny portrait of friendship and love in middle age.

While on a business trip to Kobe, Tsuneo Asai receives the news that his wife Eiko has died of a heart attack. Eiko had a heart condition so the news of her death wasn't totally unexpected. But the circumstances of her demise left Tsuneo, a softly-spoken government bureaucrat, perplexed. How did it come about that his wife-who was shy and withdrawn, and only left their house twice a week to go to haiku meetings-ended up dead in a small shop in a shady Tokyo neighborhood? When Tsuneo goes to apologize to the boutique owner for the trouble caused by his wife's death he discovers that she led a double life. He eventually confronts her lover, and, in a moment of panic, kills him. The police are stymied, however Tsuneo, the brilliant bureaucrat who usually leaves nothing to chance but is now hunted as a common murderer, feels the pressure and starts making mistakes.  A Quiet Place is by Seicho Matsumoto and is due to be published in June 2016.

Books to Look Forward to from Bitter Lemon Press

Every week, Roberto Marías crosses Rome on foot to arrive at his psychiatrist's office.  There, he often sits in silence, stumped by the ritual—but sometimes crucial memories come to the surface.  He remembers when he was a child and used to surf with his father.  He remembers the treacherous years he spent working as an under-cover Carabinieri, years that taught him how cynicism and corruption are not merely external influences, but also exist within us.  He has lived an intoxicating and crushing life, but now his psychiatrist's words, the hypnotic strolls through Rome, and a meeting with a woman named Emma—who like Roberto is ravaged by a profound guilt—are beginning to revive him.  Moreover, when eleven-year-old Giacomo asks Roberto to help him conquer his nightmares, Roberto at last achieves a true rebirth.  The Silence of the Wave is by Gianrico Carofiglio and is due out in September 2013.

 Film Tie-In Edition, previously published as 'Badfellas'.  The story is violent, pacy and full of black humour.  Imagine the Soprano family arriving in France, settling down in a small town in Normandy.  Fred Blake tells everyone he is writing a history of the D-Day landings.  In fact, Blake is Giovanni Manzoni, an ex-Mafia boss who grassed and is now in the FBI Witness Protection Program.  Having blown his cover a number of times in the US, the FBI finally sends him to France.  A coincidence beyond belief blows Fred's cover yet again and, with the arrival of the shooters from Newark, he is able to dive back into the violent life of crime he misses so much.  The Family/Badfellas is by Tonino Benacquista and is due to be published in October 2013.

The Man Who Loves Dogs is by Leonardo Padua and is due to be published in December 2013.  Cuban writer Iván Cárdenas Maturell meets a mysterious foreigner on a Havana beach who is always in the company of two Russian wolfhounds.  Iván quickly names him “the man who loved dogs”.  The man eventually confesses that he is actually Ramón Mercader, the man who killed Leon Trotsky in Mexico City in 1940, and that he is now living in a secret exile in Cuba after being released from jail in Mexico.  Moving seamlessly between Iván's life in Cuba, Mercader's early years in Spain and France, and Trotsky's long years of exile, The Man Who Loved Dogs is Leonardo Padura's most ambitious and brilliantly executed novel yet.  It is the story of revolutions fought and betrayed, the ways in which men's political convictions are continually tested and manipulated, and a powerful critique of the role of fear in consolidating political power

Karen Meek's Book To Die For - Involuntary Witness by Gianrico Carofiglio

Karen Meek runs Euro Crime, a website focusing on British and European crime fiction.  With a team of ten reviewers working for it, Euro Crime reviews up to nine books a week and Karen is in her fourth year as a judge for the CWA's International Dagger.  When not working on the website and its blog, Karen works in a public library.

I set up the Euro Crime website at the tail end of 2003.  Though it was to specialise in British and European crime fiction it took me a couple of years to actually have more than an academic interest in putting translated series in the correct order (see Mankell, Nesbo for examples of “out of order translation syndrome”).  In fact, I only read my first book in translation in 2004 but the one that really plunged me into the world of European crime fiction was Gianrico Carofiglio's Involuntary Witness, which I read in 2005.

Carofiglio is not only an anti-Mafia judge (a noble profession) but charming and handsome, and the kicker: he can also write very well.

Involuntary Witness, translated by Patrick Creagh in 2005, introduces his Bari-based lawyer Guido Guerrieri, the first of a currently four-book series.  My review at the time:

INVOLUNTARY WITNESS chronicles a period of change for its main character, lawyer Guido Guerrieri whilst at the same time enlightening the reader on the Italian justice system, before culminating in the trial of a Senegalese peddler who has been arrested for the murder of a young boy.

The book begins with Guido separating from his wife, which leads to a subsequent psychological illness.  He has panic attacks, suffers from insomnia and most embarrassingly for him feels like bursting into tears whilst in public.  His work suffers and his clients suffer until one client and one case enables him to start to recover.

Abdou Thiam, a schoolteacher in his home country, can earn ten times as much selling fake handbags and watches at the coastal resorts near Bari.  Abdou has been arrested for the kidnap and murder of a nine-year-old boy and the evidence against him is quite convincing even if totally circumstantial.  Guido believes he is innocent and takes the case.

Unlike in a lot of crime novels, Guido does not go out investigating and try to find the real killer instead he does his job i.e. he defends his client to the best of his ability and using logic, throws doubt on all the so called 'evidence' against his client.  The final verdict brought tears to my eyes.

I savoured INVOLUNTARY WITNESS with its spare writing, smoothly translated by Patrick Creagh.  With its strong sense of place and the heat, I felt I was there.  There is a real-time feel to the book as the main crime plot is stretched out whilst Guido is dealing with other business, romance, holidays and so on.  Guido is such a likeable and sympathetic character I just enjoyed every moment of the book and I can't wait for the next book to be translated.

Coming from reading British and American crime fiction where every character, no matter their profession, aims to be the detective this was such a refreshing change.  Guido is a lawyer, he has contacts he could be the detective but he chooses not to be.  He sticks to his strength of being a good lawyer.  He is not a traditional hero; he has many flaws, which makes him interesting.  The structure of the book is also unusual with a lengthy courtroom scene where the suspect is tried for murder.  Perhaps these factors mean the book shouldn't work but it does, superbly.  It's fascinating, absorbing and unpredictable and I foist this book on as many people as I can.