David Zeltserman
L'Occhio Privato di Denver

As you flip through the first pages, everything seems a bit predictable. The narrator/protagonist is an American private investigator dealing with a couple of standard cases: a young girl who ran away from home and another who wants to know the names of her real parents. Underworlds, lives that aren't worth a damn, fourth-rate strip clubs, rotten apples you have to swallow day after day to get by.

However, something is out of place: Johnny Lane is not the classic American noir detective, the typical loser brilliantly portrayed by Bruce Willis in many of his films. The kind who gets by with one too many whiskey glasses, has at least a couple of failed marriages on his back, and deep down, has a soft heart. Johnny Lane is a successful man. Everyone knows him in Denver. He writes a highly followed monthly column. He’s a celebrity.

The novel takes off when Johnny Lane starts to dangerously intertwine his life with his cases. It’s here that the words begin to surprise you. Yes, you’re genuinely surprised as you devour the pages of this funny, cynical, ironic, and ruthless noir that has no respect for anything or anyone, especially for the reader. You realize that all your suspicions are well-founded, that the rot your fingers sensed while flipping through the pages indeed has a terrible stench. It’s not just a feeling: when everything starts going to hell, you are certain of it. This novel is no exception: halfway through, you have a clear and lucid vision of the abyss, but you don’t care.

You keep reading, page after page, because Zeltserman's style is geometric, tight, unstoppable. You don’t care about right or wrong, ethics or morality. You leave it to others to deal with the innocent and the guilty. You just want to reach the end. But it’s precisely when there are only two or three pages left that you start to sweat cold because you realize that the author didn’t have the audacity and courage to write the real ending of this book. If he had, we would likely be hailing a masterpiece. Instead, nothing, we just have to settle for a great book.