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Rating: Knowing they can use the well-worn alibi for non-English mystery writers, according to which outside of England, thrillers are nothing but excellent excuses to describe slices of humanity and corners of the world while hiding their true purposes, the two authors brilliantly take advantage of this. For long parts of the book, they lead the reader along, dangling the carrot just centimeters from their nose—just enough so that they can't grab it but it gives them the constant feeling that they're on the verge of discovering another piece of the puzzle.
And meanwhile, for pages and pages, where that new piece seems always around the corner, they serve up abundant descriptions of glimpses of a Turin that no longer exists (the one from the early '70s), and in some ways still does, and descriptions of characters fitting the mold of the typical Turinese: various monsù travet; various madamin piemunteise; bored, grown-up cabinotti who amuse themselves by sketching and characterizing with their noses in the air the other types of humanity that crowd the city; cultured older slouchers defeated by life not yet resigned to their fate; traffic officers who spend time issuing tickets for illegal parking instead of pursuing lawbreakers. Characters that, in the end, can still be found today.
The two authors sow puzzle pieces with excruciating sparingness for much of the book, but manage to keep you there with the anxiety of a truffle dog until the end, and any excuse is good to throw in terms like the "itifallo di Gubbio," "affettazione" ... terms that only the great Odra and Joe Strummer wouldn't be ashamed to use on these pages shouting: "heterogenesis of ends!"
"Va là! Va là! Gadan d'ün gadan!" the elders would say to those telling of their bravadoes and vices. "Gadan" is one of those dialect terms that escapes any translation into Italian. It contains a bit of foolishness, humor, revelry, a clear desire to have fun ... and a little self-satisfaction too.
Various definitions can be found online about the well-regarded partners Fruttero & Lucentini: a pair of intellectuals from Einaudi who later moved to Mondadori ... blah, blah, blah ... I would add that IN MY OPINION, among the ingredients of their writing, there's also a bit of desire to indulge their being "gadan."
They were giants of the Italian thriller, for pity's sake, but it should also be said that even someone who isn't a writer, living in Turin, would be put in a position to write at least a passable mystery. But that minimum standard wouldn't be due to them, but to Turin.
Writing a mystery set in Milan, now that is a beautiful challenge ... with all due respect for what is happening at the moment, to me Milan would manage to cover even the most beautiful creation of good God (e.g., Birdland by Weather Report, the gaze of Ornella Muti, etc.) with a shroud of mediocrity.
Turin still has (perhaps not for long) that special aura that's hard to describe. I don't know if there are other places in the world where one can discover that words like "lugubre," "moldy," "junk" can also have a pleasant aftertaste. There is, of course, a heap of "melancholy" which helps, but elsewhere too you don't have to struggle much to find the pleasant aftertaste. Even ladyfingers manage to have their dignity outside of tiramisu in Turin.
The stimuli are abundant between black magic, the dragons on doorways, the ghosts of Savoy and Agnelli that haunt the city. And the night in Turin is still a night as commanded by the creatures of darkness, it hasn't yet been reduced to leisure time as part of the consumption basket.
As a way to better enjoy the book, I recommend watching the initial minutes of the '75 film based on the mystery (it's all on YouTube) first, because you would never be able to imagine a better appearance for the character of Anna Carla than Jacqueline Bisset, one of those women endowed with a beauty that truly hurts, and it's not just a line to give an idea, it seriously hurts.
The cover next to this is the one of the first edition (I believe), the one I read has a cover too crappy.
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