In the shadow of Andrea Camilleri and its mythical Montalbano, also Italian authors such as Marco Vichi they carry on the legacy of the dark crime genre rooted in that notion of the sordid raiding all kinds of estates, offices and even police stations.
No one is free from taint, even a commissioner Bordelli who is sometimes tempted like any character whose purchase frees him from potential judicial charges. But on that tightrope is where, precisely, guys like Bordelli or his predecessor Montalbano, emerge as worthy representatives of the most human doubts and miseries. Because when you break your face with the world you end up weakened and exposed to the risks of your own demons.
But Vichi does not seem to take the noir as its only aspect and it remains to be known in greater depth in translations to come. Among some things and others the bibliography of this author already extends to dozens of novels and a multitude of volumes of stories. Undoubtedly an interesting storyteller as I say still unknown on this side of the Mediterranean ...
Top 3 recommended novels by Marco Vichi
Commissioner Bordelli
It is difficult to point out a work different from the first in such a powerful series. Because, idealization or not, one always returns to that beginning, to the encounter with the protagonist of so many battles and so many frictions with that side of life that tears the skin.
There are stereotypical places of the noir genre such as certain neighborhoods of some large cities, or northern latitudes of a Europe where the north marks the point of current noir. And yet, magical proposals are also born in contrasts. Beautiful Florence oozing culture, glorious past and elegance. Only behind all appearances shadows are always projected...
Florence, summer 1963. Commissioner Bordelli endures the heat in a city deserted by the holidays. The banal summer routine is interrupted by the appearance of the lifeless body of an old lady in her XNUMXth century villa. The circumstances of the death and the autopsy performed by Diotivede, Bordelli's trusted coroner and friend, lead one to believe that it was a crime. The commissioner, little lover of the rules and more in favor of following his own ethical code, begins an investigation that puts him in contact with the victim's family and people who used to frequent him.
Death in Florence
After VichÃ, without a doubt Florence was never the same again. Because once an imaginary opposed to the official has been awakened, complementary like any legend of the dark side, the matter of getting lost in depending on which streets has that point of cultural enjoyment as well as disturbing waiting when it is sensed that something disconcerting may happen ...
Florence, October 1966. Little Giacomo Pellissari disappears without a trace. An old woman has been the last to see it: the slim body, running with the wallet swinging on her back ... It seems that the earth has swallowed it. Commissioner Bordelli investigates tirelessly. He knows that there is always a simpler explanation for these mysteries, although perhaps as dark as the Arno River.
A flood, as the Florentines no longer remember, overflows the river and floods the entire city. Bordelli thinks that this tragedy will prevent further investigations of the Giacomo case, with disturbing implications. He fears that the crime will go unpunished, but his tenacity has no limits neither for this case, nor to conquer the beautiful Eleonora, the young woman with whom he has fallen in love and who is afraid of losing.
A dirty affair
The blackest of Bordelli's novels, a plot that is out of focus from his usual tendency for that noir covered in political wills, white-collar maneuvers and other corruptions to delve into crime with the open grave.
April 1964. Florence is covered in a gray and sad sky that does not bode well. Casimiro, a friend of Commissioner Bordelli, has just discovered the body of a man in Fiesole, on the outskirts of the city. Although they rush to the scene of the alleged crime, when they arrive there is no longer a trace of the body.
A few days later, the lifeless body of a girl appears and a strange mark is discovered on it. It will not be the last corpse. Thus begins the siege of a possible serial killer and one of the darkest periods in Bordelli's career. It's a dirty business for him and the rest of the investigative team; a case that seems destined to turn into an endless nightmare, as dark as the sky over Florence.
