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Thriller
pace
During
his show, Jean-Loup Verdier, a famous Radio Montecarlo
disc-jockey, receives a call from a man who declares live on
radio that he's planning to commit a crime. That very night,
Formula One racing driver, Jochen Welder, and his fiancée,
Arijane Parker, a famous chess player, are murdered: both
victims' faces are completely removed by the killer to make
masks. This sets the scene for the almost 700 pages of “Io
uccido” (I kill), this year's surprise literary find: perhaps
because the author of this thriller - who has been mentioned in
the same breath as Thomas Harris and Jeffrey Deaver - is Giorgio
Faletti. Yes, you've got it, the same Faletti of “Drive In”
and “Striscia la notizia”, the inventor of vigilante Vito
Catozzo, the man who scooped a
surprise second place at Sanremo in ‘94 with “Signor
tenente”. The idea of trying his hand at this typical American
suspense mechanism which hinges on quick pace and a
helter-skelter succession of twists in the plot, was undeniably
a risky bet. Falletti dared to stake everything and take his
chances, placing his band of characters - who boldly run close
to the stereotypical - in the unusual setting of the
Principality of Monaco: there's Detective Superintendent Hulot,
whose son died while just a child; FBI agent Frank Ottobre, and
old friend of Hulot's, on holiday and trying desperately to
forget the death of his wife, but who inevitably becomes
involved in the investigation; the mentally retarded Pierrot,
who has the gift of being able to find vital clues in certain
pieces of music; American army general Nathan Parker, the father
of murdered Arijane, who rushes to Montecarlo to carry out his
own personal, ferocious manhunt for the killer. Amid literary
and film allusions (from “The Silence of the Lambs” to
“Chinatown”), the novice thriller writer proceeds slickly
about his business, moving his pawns with demiurgical dexterity:
the quick pace, bar occasional slackening, is maintained to the
end and actually steps up in the second part, with the menacing
Provencal digression which almost unravels the mystery. There's
plenty of material for a film, which will no doubt be made:
what's more, there's a literary talent that justifies our hoping
Faletti will not abandon his sortie into thriller territory here.
F.T.
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Giorgio
Faletti
Io uccido
Baldini Castoldi Dalai
681 pages
17.00 euros
Other
analyses
Niente
di vero tranne gli occhi
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