Via delle Oche
Carlo Lucarelli, Michael Reynolds (translator)
Europa Editions ISBN: 978-1-933372-53-2
Pub. date: June 05 2008
144 pages
Size: 5.25 x 8.25
Price: $14.95




“Lucarelli skillfully forces us to view De Luca’s twisted world from the policeman’s own skewed perspective.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

It is 1948. Italy’s fate is soon to be decided in bitterly contested national elections. A man has been found dead in via delle Oche, at the center of Bologna’s notorious red light district. The city fathers would like to disguise the man’s death as a suicide. But Commissario De Luca knows better. While the man hanging from a rafter does have a noose around his neck and an overturned stool beneath him, when the stool is righted, his feet don’t reach the seat. “Normal enough that a hanged man grows a little longer if he’s left a while,” De Luca quips. “But I’ve never heard of one getting shorter.”

As always, De Luca is unwilling to look the other way when evidence in the man’s murder points to local politicians and members of the Bologna police force. The brutal worlds of crime and politics conspire once again, and in this installment of the renowned De Luca trilogy, sex for money is added into the mix. As elections creep nearer, the death count escalates with every new lead. De Luca is so close to the truth he can smell it, and it reeks of danger. In this third and final installment, violence, power, and sex combine to create an atmosphere that becomes more volatile with every day.

“Italy’s Carlo Lucarelli proves that the dark and sinister are better evoked when one opts for unadulterated grit and grime.”—San Diego Union-Tribune