0:00:23 > 0:00:25Italy.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29Enchanting and beautiful home to historic architecture,
0:00:29 > 0:00:33art and fashion.
0:00:33 > 0:00:37But there's a dark heart to this tourist dream.
0:00:45 > 0:00:48Italy is also a society of organised crime,
0:00:48 > 0:00:52corruption and unsolved murders.
0:00:54 > 0:00:56Out of this chilling reality,
0:00:56 > 0:00:58a new wave of crime fiction has emerged...
0:01:01 > 0:01:05..with its own twist on the conventions of the detective novel.
0:01:05 > 0:01:07Unlike the Scandinavians,
0:01:07 > 0:01:11you follow what I would term the British and American tradition fairly closely.
0:01:11 > 0:01:14Murder, puzzle, psychology.
0:01:14 > 0:01:19The Italians, their books are much more relevant to the world we live in.
0:01:19 > 0:01:22It's a no-nonsense,
0:01:22 > 0:01:24no-frills
0:01:24 > 0:01:28crime thriller, which is absolutely in your face.
0:01:28 > 0:01:30It's a world where everyone is a suspect.
0:01:30 > 0:01:33In a society where no-one can be trusted,
0:01:33 > 0:01:37Italian crime writers take an almost philosophical delight
0:01:37 > 0:01:41in telling stories that offer no simple resolutions.
0:01:50 > 0:01:54We write more noir in Italy than traditional thriller.
0:01:54 > 0:01:59That's because we are more pessimistic than you about human nature.
0:02:01 > 0:02:05A noir world with no happy endings.
0:02:37 > 0:02:40The detective novels of Andrea Camilleri
0:02:40 > 0:02:42are set in contemporary Sicily.
0:02:42 > 0:02:48They deal with the casebook of the worldly Inspector Montalbano of the local police force.
0:02:58 > 0:03:00I absolutely adore Inspector Montalbano.
0:03:00 > 0:03:08I think the character is, in many ways, a kind of stereotypical view
0:03:08 > 0:03:13of an Italian and perhaps also of a Sicilian man.
0:03:14 > 0:03:16In the TV version of the books,
0:03:16 > 0:03:20Montalbano's liking for long lunches becomes his trademark.
0:03:21 > 0:03:24He's frequently shown at his favourite restaurant
0:03:24 > 0:03:27where the waiters are left in no doubt about his passion for food.
0:03:39 > 0:03:44He has an incredible interest in the whole culture and identity
0:03:44 > 0:03:48of Sicily, particularly shown through his love of food.
0:03:52 > 0:03:56Montalbano is as enthusiastic when forensically inspecting a menu
0:03:56 > 0:04:00as he is searching for clues to a crime.
0:04:02 > 0:04:05"Bring me a generous serving of the hake.
0:04:56 > 0:05:00Camilleri armed Montalbano with a dry sense of humour.
0:05:35 > 0:05:39Like all Sicilian policemen, Montalbano has to face the Mafia.
0:05:39 > 0:05:43But Camilleri handles this confrontation in a surprising way.
0:06:21 > 0:06:29The Mafia is so deeply implicated into the structure of Sicilian and Italian society,
0:06:29 > 0:06:34that if it disappeared, a lot of it would actually crumble.
0:06:34 > 0:06:38It's the cement that glues some of the bricks together.
0:06:38 > 0:06:42Until they can find a substitute, they have to be there.
0:06:44 > 0:06:47In a community where no-one can be relied on,
0:06:47 > 0:06:50Camilleri's stories are a web of intrigue.
0:06:50 > 0:06:52where nothing is ever as it seems.
0:06:56 > 0:07:00In this scene from the television series, Montalbano arrives
0:07:00 > 0:07:04to investigate an alleged kidnapping and recognises immediately
0:07:04 > 0:07:06that there are many layers to the case.
0:07:27 > 0:07:31The television series portrays Montalbano's encounters
0:07:31 > 0:07:36with the Mafia in a very particular way.
0:07:38 > 0:07:42It as if he's dealing not with a criminal organisation,
0:07:42 > 0:07:44but with local bureaucrats,
0:07:44 > 0:07:47a tone he maintains no matter how long the conversation.
0:08:15 > 0:08:18Camilleri rejects the Hollywood version of the Mafia,
0:08:18 > 0:08:21refusing to put them centre stage in his stories.
0:09:00 > 0:09:05Instead, Camilleri chooses to focus on Montalbano's commitment to the law.
0:09:09 > 0:09:13He is someone who really has a very strong sense of justice.
0:09:13 > 0:09:18He will pursue something because he wants to get to the truth.
0:09:22 > 0:09:25Montalbano's image may be laid back, but his methods are not.
0:09:25 > 0:09:28Here he conducts a classic interview.
0:09:52 > 0:09:56Where Montalbano is different from most other Italian coppers
0:09:56 > 0:09:58is that he isn't judgemental.
0:09:58 > 0:10:01He takes on the chin whatever he hears.
0:10:01 > 0:10:04He might be judgemental in terms of his own feelings
0:10:04 > 0:10:06that he doesn't necessarily need to show to people,
0:10:06 > 0:10:09but he remains this cool, rational presence...
0:10:09 > 0:10:11A bit Holmesian, if you like.
0:10:11 > 0:10:13Where the intellect takes over,
0:10:13 > 0:10:18although he's a very physical man - he's concerned with food, sex...
0:10:18 > 0:10:20Those are elements of his life.
0:10:20 > 0:10:24But he's still just basically a rational intelligence that works on problems.
0:10:26 > 0:10:30It's conveyed by Camilleri that people talk to him and they trust him.
0:10:30 > 0:10:35He gets results that way - more that way then by browbeating people.
0:10:37 > 0:10:40But faced with a corrupt society,
0:10:40 > 0:10:45Montalbano is rarely able actually to solve a crime...
0:10:45 > 0:10:49And this sets him apart from the traditional fictional detective.
0:11:57 > 0:12:01The lack of a resolution in the Inspector Montalbano stories
0:12:01 > 0:12:06can trace its roots back to a novel set in Rome in 1927...
0:12:08 > 0:12:10..during Mussolini's fascist regime.
0:12:21 > 0:12:26In That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana,
0:12:26 > 0:12:31Carlo Emilio Gadda employed a crime story to explore Italy's fascist era.
0:12:31 > 0:12:38He's using the tropes of crime fiction - the burglary, the murder and the ensuing investigation -
0:12:38 > 0:12:41more as a way of examining society
0:12:41 > 0:12:44and what has caused the state of affairs,
0:12:44 > 0:12:46the fascist state in Italian society.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana begins with the murder of a woman
0:12:53 > 0:12:56in an upmarket Rome apartment.
0:12:59 > 0:13:04"The body of the poor signora was lying in an infamous position
0:13:04 > 0:13:08"a deep, a terrible red cut opened her throat fiercely.
0:13:08 > 0:13:11"It had taken half the neck from the front towards the right,
0:13:11 > 0:13:16"that is towards her left, the right to those who were looking down."
0:13:18 > 0:13:21But Gadda shows how pointless it is to investigate
0:13:21 > 0:13:25a single crime when the society that surrounds it is so corrupt.
0:13:40 > 0:13:46Gadda's story subtly reveals the way fascism penetrated the lives of ordinary Italians.
0:13:49 > 0:13:53It is an extremely critical view of the regime, particularly because
0:13:53 > 0:13:58one of the things, to me, is very interesting in novel is the way
0:13:58 > 0:14:03in which the main female character represents what Italian women
0:14:03 > 0:14:07were facing during the fascist years.
0:14:07 > 0:14:11It's clearly a very patriarchal society.
0:14:11 > 0:14:15Lilliana can't have children so she has all these fairly ambiguous,
0:14:15 > 0:14:21complex relationships with other young women, they are adopted by her.
0:14:21 > 0:14:24The whole crime revolves around that.
0:14:24 > 0:14:28She has been murdered and we need to find out who murdered her.
0:14:42 > 0:14:47Gadda was an established literary figure who delivered his anti-fascist message
0:14:47 > 0:14:53in a distinctive style that mixed local dialects and slang to satirise Italy's dictator.
0:14:57 > 0:15:00Gadda, when he talks about Mussolini,
0:15:00 > 0:15:03he is satirical of his performances,
0:15:03 > 0:15:06his penchant for particular uniforms.
0:15:06 > 0:15:11His macho posturing. There's a series of name-calling that goes on.
0:15:16 > 0:15:22Here Gadda mocks Mussolini in a way Italian readers would have instantly recognised.
0:15:34 > 0:15:38I think he was attempting to do something which really hadn't been done before.
0:15:38 > 0:15:41Obviously, the closest parallel is Joyce.
0:15:41 > 0:15:44The time we spend in Rome is like the time we spend in Dublin with Joyce.
0:15:44 > 0:15:48It's astonishingly very panoply,
0:15:48 > 0:15:51this picture of an entire society.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54It uses, like Joyce, a variety of different styles.
0:15:54 > 0:15:59It uses a straightforward, academic style, it uses popular vernacular -
0:15:59 > 0:16:01it just throws everything in.
0:16:01 > 0:16:05"In front of the big louse coloured building a crowd circumfused...
0:16:05 > 0:16:09"..Protected an odd job man also in an apron, striped,
0:16:09 > 0:16:12"his nose the shape and colour of a wondrous pepper...
0:16:12 > 0:16:15"..concierges, the maids, the little daughters of the concierges."
0:16:15 > 0:16:22What you have is a detective story, but it's almost a sort of playing
0:16:22 > 0:16:24with the conventions of the detective story.
0:16:24 > 0:16:27You have a particular kind of inspector,
0:16:27 > 0:16:29a particular kind of investigation -
0:16:29 > 0:16:32one that's ultimately open-ended and unresolved.
0:16:34 > 0:16:38It seems to be that this is an inquiry into the nature
0:16:38 > 0:16:42of reality and the way in which one can know reality.
0:16:42 > 0:16:47So every type of inquiry leads to a new set of possibilities.
0:16:47 > 0:16:52So you can never really get to know and understand reality fully.
0:16:54 > 0:16:59The kind of suggestion is that what fascism is really doing is imposing
0:16:59 > 0:17:04a series of infantile simplifications on the complexity of reality.
0:17:06 > 0:17:09By setting his detective novel in the fascist era,
0:17:09 > 0:17:13Gadda became the first writer to use the crime story
0:17:13 > 0:17:15as a way of looking at Italian history.
0:17:18 > 0:17:21I've always thought that Gadda was one of the very first writers
0:17:21 > 0:17:28that makes the link between crime fiction and Italian history very clear.
0:17:28 > 0:17:32That will become almost like a blueprint for later writers.
0:17:43 > 0:17:48After Mussolini's fascist dictatorship ended with Italy's defeat in the Second World War,
0:17:48 > 0:17:52a writer from Sicily began gathering material
0:17:52 > 0:17:56for crime stories which would challenge another sinister force
0:17:56 > 0:17:59that came to dominate post-war Italy.
0:18:14 > 0:18:17Into the 1960s, Leonardo Sciascia's novels
0:18:17 > 0:18:21would expose the power of the Sicilian Mafia.
0:18:27 > 0:18:31The Mafia had emerged as powerful players in Italian society
0:18:31 > 0:18:35during the US occupation in the immediate post-war years.
0:18:40 > 0:18:46Leonardo Sciascia's 1961 novel The Day Of The Owl told the story
0:18:46 > 0:18:50of a police detective's battle to solve the murder of a local businessman.
0:18:50 > 0:18:55At every turn, his investigations are hampered by murky Mafia forces.
0:19:01 > 0:19:06It's a novel in which you really get a sense of how deeply embedded
0:19:06 > 0:19:08the Mafia is in Sicilian society.
0:19:08 > 0:19:14Not just simply from the point of view of the economics but from the point of view of the culture
0:19:14 > 0:19:18and the reign of terror that, in a sense, gripped Sicily
0:19:18 > 0:19:23has influenced the way in which Sicilians live their lives,
0:19:23 > 0:19:26the social cohesion of communities.
0:19:26 > 0:19:30The whole idea of not being able to speak freely,
0:19:30 > 0:19:33the sense of distrust that people have.
0:19:36 > 0:19:39On a personal level, the difficult relationship that people have
0:19:39 > 0:19:42with each other all based on the fact that you cannot trust anybody.
0:19:46 > 0:19:48"Two ear-splitting shots rang out."
0:19:51 > 0:19:54The beginning of the novel, in which someone gets shot by the Mafia
0:19:54 > 0:19:56and no-one has seen or heard
0:19:56 > 0:19:59anything, is really emblematic of that.
0:20:02 > 0:20:06"Nobody on the bus saw a thing.
0:20:06 > 0:20:10"It was a hell of a job to find out who was on the bus.
0:20:10 > 0:20:16"The passengers said the windows were so steamy they looked like frosted glass.
0:20:16 > 0:20:17"Maybe true."
0:20:20 > 0:20:21No-one has seen anything.
0:20:21 > 0:20:25You don't want to be involved, it's far too dangerous to be involved.
0:20:25 > 0:20:28You do know in Sicily, or you knew at the time, that you didn't have...
0:20:28 > 0:20:34The police wouldn't come to help. The state was not there for you.
0:20:34 > 0:20:39And that, I think, instigates a mechanism of self-preservation.
0:20:39 > 0:20:40You pretend nothing has happened.
0:20:40 > 0:20:44You don't want to know, you haven't seen, you haven't heard.
0:20:44 > 0:20:46You mind your own business.
0:20:46 > 0:20:50You lead your life in a very closed world.
0:21:05 > 0:21:08Sciascia doesn't consider himself to be a crime writer.
0:21:08 > 0:21:09He's looking at society.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13And particularly Sciascia, as opposed to maybe Gadda or others,
0:21:13 > 0:21:17what's important for him is not just Sicily but also the landscape,
0:21:17 > 0:21:19the colours, the smells of Sicily,
0:21:19 > 0:21:23which I think come through incredibly well in his writing.
0:21:26 > 0:21:28"Dawn was infusing the countryside.
0:21:28 > 0:21:31"It seemed to rise from the tender green wheat,
0:21:31 > 0:21:33"from the rocks and dripping trees
0:21:33 > 0:21:37"and mount imperceptibly towards a blank sky.
0:21:37 > 0:21:39The Gramole, incongruous in green uplands...
0:21:48 > 0:21:50Sicily IS different.
0:21:50 > 0:21:55You get off the boat or the plane and you feel you're in a different country in some cases.
0:21:55 > 0:21:58It's a bit like, if you understand French, if you go to Quebec.
0:21:58 > 0:22:00You almost don't understand the language.
0:22:00 > 0:22:06The Sicilians are very proud to have seceded, so to speak, from Italy,
0:22:06 > 0:22:09not only geographically but also, I think, mentally.
0:22:09 > 0:22:13It's a different atmosphere altogether, and there's a certain pride of place.
0:22:17 > 0:22:23Like Gadda, Sciascia chose to reject the conventional model of detective fiction.
0:22:23 > 0:22:28Instead, his investigator, Inspector Bellodi, is forced
0:22:28 > 0:22:32to confront the corruption that exists in the society around him.
0:22:32 > 0:22:38In Day Of The Owl, the interesting thing is the protagonist, who goes on a journey of discovery.
0:22:38 > 0:22:39It's an education for him.
0:22:39 > 0:22:46He has to learn the realpolitik of the way things get done and the way things don't get done.
0:22:46 > 0:22:51And that book, more than many Italian crime books, has all-encapsulated the fact
0:22:51 > 0:22:55that you learn who committed the crime, but there isn't necessarily closure.
0:22:55 > 0:22:58And we really want that, readers want that.
0:22:58 > 0:23:01But the great Italian crime writers don't give you that.
0:23:01 > 0:23:04They say, "OK, you know who committed the crime.
0:23:04 > 0:23:07"But this is the real word, and criminals go unpunished."
0:23:18 > 0:23:23By the late 1960s, Sciascia began to inject political intrigue into
0:23:23 > 0:23:27his stories as a way of talking about the rise of terrorism in Italy.
0:23:27 > 0:23:32An era that would become known as the Years of Lead.
0:23:36 > 0:23:39The Years of Lead starts from December 1969,
0:23:39 > 0:23:43when a bomb is planted in a bag in central Milan, in Piazza Fontana.
0:23:43 > 0:23:48There's a real sense, at the time, of great discontent.
0:23:51 > 0:23:56This neo-fascist bombing began a decade of terror,
0:23:56 > 0:24:01with bloody attacks launched by both right and left-wing extremists.
0:24:03 > 0:24:07Sciascia now took on Italian politics.
0:24:07 > 0:24:11In 1971, he wrote Equal Danger, a tense crime thriller
0:24:11 > 0:24:15about the murder, one by one, of some of the country's top judges.
0:24:18 > 0:24:22"Never had prosecutors or judges been threatened,
0:24:22 > 0:24:25"or struck down for a position taken during a trial,
0:24:25 > 0:24:27"or for a verdict delivered."
0:24:30 > 0:24:36In Equal Danger, there is a plot to blame the murders on left-wing extremists.
0:24:43 > 0:24:47Sciascia takes on both the left and the right.
0:24:47 > 0:24:49So, he's instructed to pin the crime on the left.
0:24:49 > 0:24:51But it's not that simple.
0:24:51 > 0:24:54But you would think, "Oh, yes, OK, that means he's a writer of the left.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57"Therefore, the left will be idealised." No, they're not.
0:24:57 > 0:25:03They're shown as disinterested, they have fashionable left-wing causes which they take up.
0:25:03 > 0:25:07It's quite a nuanced view of Italian society.
0:25:07 > 0:25:11Maybe typical, in many ways, of a lot of Italians who do have
0:25:11 > 0:25:14ambiguous views about political dimensions.
0:25:22 > 0:25:26We have a period of great social unrest, political uncertainty.
0:25:26 > 0:25:33A sense in which no-one knew whether the enemy
0:25:33 > 0:25:37came from within the state or from outside.
0:25:48 > 0:25:55Through the 1970s, Italy was torn apart by a series of violent terrorist attacks.
0:26:00 > 0:26:05In total in that period, we have 14,000 terrorist attacks,
0:26:05 > 0:26:07374 people are killed
0:26:07 > 0:26:10and 1,170 are wounded.
0:26:15 > 0:26:23In 1978, the kidnapping and murder of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro troubled Italians.
0:26:24 > 0:26:28Was Moro killed by the Marxist militant group the Red Brigades
0:26:28 > 0:26:32or by sinister forces connected to the government?
0:26:35 > 0:26:39The conspiracy theories surrounding the execution of Moro
0:26:39 > 0:26:43prompted Leonardo Sciascia to write his own investigation.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48In The Moro Affair, Sciascia drew his reader's attention
0:26:48 > 0:26:53to inconsistencies in the official version of events.
0:26:54 > 0:26:58It all contributed to an atmosphere of political turmoil,
0:26:58 > 0:27:02in which there were frequent miscarriages of justice.
0:27:02 > 0:27:09The victim of one famous case would write crime stories which drew on his experience of the Years of Lead.
0:27:22 > 0:27:28In 1976, Massimo Carlotto was a student and left-wing activist
0:27:28 > 0:27:31who was framed for a murder he didn't commit.
0:28:00 > 0:28:03After being sentenced to 15 years in prison,
0:28:03 > 0:28:08Carlotto fled Italy, first for Paris and then to Central America.
0:28:08 > 0:28:12He was returned to an Italian prison after five years on the run
0:28:12 > 0:28:16and began an extraordinary legal battle to clear his name.
0:28:57 > 0:29:01Eventually pardoned, Carlotto was released in 1993.
0:29:01 > 0:29:04This experience led him to write The Fugitive,
0:29:04 > 0:29:06which became a best-selling novel.
0:29:09 > 0:29:15"I was a classic accidental fugitive, someone who never expected to have
0:29:15 > 0:29:18"problems with the law, who never thought he would need to
0:29:18 > 0:29:23"invent an escape from his own country as the one way to save his own life,
0:29:23 > 0:29:25"his freedom and his dignity."
0:29:31 > 0:29:35The Fugitive inspired a film about Carlotto's years on the run.
0:29:42 > 0:29:48This graphic scene leaves the audience in no doubt about how tough it was for him.
0:29:48 > 0:29:53He was tortured at the hands of the Mexican police after he was captured.
0:30:20 > 0:30:24Carlotto is a kind of special case because obviously he's a man
0:30:24 > 0:30:28who knows from first hand about miscarriages of justice.
0:30:28 > 0:30:32It's amazing really, if you think about it, what he went through
0:30:32 > 0:30:35in terms of the accusations and the time he spent on the run
0:30:35 > 0:30:38and so forth before he became a writer.
0:30:38 > 0:30:42The ending of that in Britain might have been a ghost writer coming in,
0:30:42 > 0:30:45so the celeb writes a disposable book that's thrown away
0:30:45 > 0:30:49that tells a story, everybody reads it, and its serialised in the papers.
0:30:49 > 0:30:51He actually turned into a very good writer.
0:30:56 > 0:31:01Carlotto has gone on to write violent crime fiction set in contemporary Italy,
0:31:01 > 0:31:05drawn from his experience of being in the country's toughest prisons.
0:31:28 > 0:31:32Carlotto's rough justice shaped the raw writing style of his novels.
0:31:34 > 0:31:38He was influenced by the political tone of Leonardo Sciascia
0:31:38 > 0:31:41but he added a new level of brutality of his own
0:31:41 > 0:31:45to stories like The Goodbye Kiss.
0:31:45 > 0:31:49It's a no-nonsense, no-frills crime thriller
0:31:49 > 0:31:54which is absolutely in your face and doesn't deal with subtleties,
0:31:54 > 0:31:57but Italian readers and British readers who have encountered him
0:31:57 > 0:31:59know exactly where they are with him.
0:31:59 > 0:32:04The book's kind of like a bucket of cold water being thrown in the face.
0:32:09 > 0:32:14His books basically look at white slavery, drugs, prostitution.
0:32:14 > 0:32:18I mean, there's nothing easy or cosy about his books.
0:32:21 > 0:32:23For The Goodbye Kiss,
0:32:23 > 0:32:27Carlotto rejected the convention of an investigating detective.
0:32:29 > 0:32:35He inverted this tradition by creating an amoral, violent former terrorist as the lead character.
0:32:43 > 0:32:47The darkly shot opening scene from the film of The Goodbye Kiss
0:32:47 > 0:32:49sets up this figure perfectly,
0:32:49 > 0:32:52as he coldly shoots one of his own men in the back of the head.
0:33:24 > 0:33:28The Goodbye Kiss is filmed as a modern day noir.
0:33:33 > 0:33:38In this world, killings are at once realistic and stylised.
0:33:40 > 0:33:45The male characters are real, sort of, macho, strong, aggressive.
0:33:45 > 0:33:49And this is not simply because Carlotto is using a particular genre
0:33:49 > 0:33:56in which traditionally male characters are depicted in a certain way.
0:33:56 > 0:33:58There's something more to that.
0:33:58 > 0:34:03When you look at the way in which women are represented in the novels, they are very marginal.
0:34:05 > 0:34:08Carlotto's time spent with hardened criminals
0:34:08 > 0:34:13shaped the hardcore misogynistic actions of his lead characters.
0:34:13 > 0:34:16I don't think Carlotto does understand women.
0:34:16 > 0:34:22He sees them basically as pawns in terrible games,
0:34:22 > 0:34:26which is probably why there is so much violence against women.
0:34:26 > 0:34:28And these women seldom fight back.
0:34:31 > 0:34:34I think he is the kind of writer who says, "I'm sorry, this is it.
0:34:34 > 0:34:38"I'm not going to varnish things. This is the way people behave."
0:34:53 > 0:34:57There's no sentimentality. This kind of a small amount of human feeling.
0:34:57 > 0:35:02In fact, when you read a Carlotto book, you're trying to search out that bit of human feeling
0:35:02 > 0:35:06cos you wanted and you grab it, and you're really grateful for it. He's not dealing with that.
0:35:08 > 0:35:14Carlotto's version of realism is motivated by a desire to bring what he regards
0:35:14 > 0:35:19as a more journalistic approach than seen in Anglo-American crime fiction.
0:36:10 > 0:36:14Carlotto's first-hand experience of Italy's violent underworld
0:36:14 > 0:36:20has heralded a new wave of Italian writers who base their novels on real characters.
0:36:30 > 0:36:32From the other side of the law,
0:36:32 > 0:36:37a top Roman judge has dipped into his casebook to write an explosive novel
0:36:37 > 0:36:42set in the Italian capital about the city's notorious gangsters.
0:36:58 > 0:37:02Giancarlo De Cataldo's debut novel, Romanzo Criminale,
0:37:02 > 0:37:06was inspired by his work as an investigating judge,
0:37:06 > 0:37:10a role that took him to both crime scenes and prisons.
0:37:12 > 0:37:19Being a judge helps me to go in some places where writers long for going all their lives.
0:37:21 > 0:37:24Like houses where people have been killed.
0:37:24 > 0:37:29And so that's a chance. If you are talented as a writer,
0:37:29 > 0:37:32if you have these gifts, you must use it.
0:37:32 > 0:37:34It would be a crime not to use it.
0:37:40 > 0:37:44Cataldo's training as a judge and his activity as a judge
0:37:44 > 0:37:51I think is important, not only because it gives him
0:37:51 > 0:37:56visibility, it gave visibility to his books at the beginning and it attracted additional interest.
0:37:56 > 0:37:58But also because it informs his way of writing.
0:38:11 > 0:38:17De Cataldo based his story on a real criminal street gang, the Banda della Magliana.
0:38:19 > 0:38:25I studied the phenomenon of Banda della Magliana, which was a gang organisation
0:38:25 > 0:38:32for people coming from the suburbs of Rome that became a real criminal power
0:38:32 > 0:38:37collecting money and imposing a kind of law,
0:38:37 > 0:38:42as if Mafia for the first time had taken place in Rome.
0:38:43 > 0:38:48I first met one of those people from the gang, he was repented,
0:38:48 > 0:38:52he was under protection of justice.
0:38:52 > 0:38:55But those judges didn't believe him.
0:38:55 > 0:38:59So he was set free and then murdered.
0:38:59 > 0:39:03The second occasion, the second chance was working in a trial against
0:39:03 > 0:39:08some of the members of these gangs, the survivors,
0:39:08 > 0:39:10because many of them had died.
0:39:10 > 0:39:18They were real criminals, but they were old-style criminals at the same time.
0:39:21 > 0:39:25Set over more than a decade, De Cataldo's novel
0:39:25 > 0:39:28imagines how these gangsters may have been involved
0:39:28 > 0:39:30in the darkest chapters of The Years of Lead,
0:39:30 > 0:39:34an era that continues to intrigue Italians.
0:39:38 > 0:39:41One of the achievements of Romanzo Criminale is to fold in
0:39:41 > 0:39:45the real life events that he talks about in a kind of responsible way.
0:39:45 > 0:39:47I mean, it's a long tradition.
0:39:47 > 0:39:49Tolstoy put Napoleon in War and Peace.
0:39:49 > 0:39:52So it's been happening for quite a long time to put real events in.
0:39:55 > 0:40:00In 2005, these real events were brought to the cinema screen,
0:40:00 > 0:40:02when Romanzo Criminale was adapted
0:40:02 > 0:40:08into a stylish gangster epic, dubbed the Italian Goodfellas.
0:40:12 > 0:40:17A pivotal scene from the film deliberately mixes real life news reports of the kidnapping
0:40:17 > 0:40:23of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro with the action, reflecting the twin focus of the book.
0:40:34 > 0:40:38I think the novel wants to inform readers.
0:40:38 > 0:40:42I think the novel wants to convey historical facts.
0:40:42 > 0:40:48And certainly wants to convey a particular idea of historical facts as well.
0:40:58 > 0:41:02De Cataldo also explores the bloodiest event
0:41:02 > 0:41:07from The Years of Lead, which took place at Bologna train station in August, 1980.
0:41:12 > 0:41:15In a dramatic scene from the film,
0:41:15 > 0:41:20gang member Ice finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
0:41:22 > 0:41:24The fictional character being placed within this
0:41:24 > 0:41:30environment allows us to indulge what might have taken place.
0:41:30 > 0:41:32We see Ice arriving at the station.
0:41:32 > 0:41:37The clock says 10:23. We know at 10:25 the bomb has to go off.
0:41:37 > 0:41:42And to see him emerging from the station with the bomb going off behind him...
0:41:46 > 0:41:49..and then walking in the rubble of
0:41:49 > 0:41:55what is an incredibly effective reconstruction of the events,
0:41:55 > 0:41:57is extremely disturbing.
0:41:57 > 0:42:04And I think that scene brings us into the heart of the Bologna bombing.
0:42:04 > 0:42:06It puts us there among the dead.
0:42:06 > 0:42:11I mean, the shots of children are incredibly chilling.
0:42:11 > 0:42:15And it brings home to us as well that this is not
0:42:15 > 0:42:18just a fun gangster movie, but that there is a very sinister side to it.
0:42:24 > 0:42:28The movie is far different from the book, because in the book,
0:42:28 > 0:42:34we had no real link in a comparison
0:42:34 > 0:42:37between the gang and the Bologna massacre.
0:42:37 > 0:42:40The movie is far different.
0:42:40 > 0:42:45But what I wanted to mark was that are part of Italian history
0:42:45 > 0:42:49was criminal history, and that there's a grey zone
0:42:49 > 0:42:53between the normal citizen,
0:42:53 > 0:42:58the power, the legal economy, and the underworld.
0:42:58 > 0:43:03And that is why Romanzo Criminale is more than a thriller.
0:43:03 > 0:43:06A historical and political crime novel.
0:43:10 > 0:43:13The location of this bombing was significant.
0:43:13 > 0:43:18Bologna, a university city, was known as Red Bologna,
0:43:18 > 0:43:22in part due its reputation as a centre of left-wing politics.
0:43:28 > 0:43:32And today, this politically radical city has inspired
0:43:32 > 0:43:35a young female author to write a crime story
0:43:35 > 0:43:38which confronts the rise of sexual violence against women.
0:44:03 > 0:44:09In 2010, Barbara Baraldi's novel The Girl With The Crystal Eyes
0:44:09 > 0:44:12introduced a new character into Italian crime fiction.
0:44:14 > 0:44:16The female vigilante.
0:46:35 > 0:46:38"Her quick, small fingers pick up a rose.
0:46:38 > 0:46:42"But it's not the rose's thorns that pierce the man's flesh,
0:46:42 > 0:46:45"but a kitchen knife, sharp and shining
0:46:45 > 0:46:49"that enters deep into his chest and then slides out again,
0:46:49 > 0:46:52"spurting hot, dark, dense drops of blood
0:46:52 > 0:46:56"that splash the perfect features of her face."
0:47:07 > 0:47:12I think you'd have to say a writer like Baraldi has a cinematic sensibility.
0:47:12 > 0:47:15She deals in a kind of visual language, even though its words
0:47:15 > 0:47:19on a page, which she knows readers will quickly relate to.
0:47:19 > 0:47:23So there is the literary equivalent of fast cutting, and cutting between scenes.
0:47:26 > 0:47:28And there's a minimum of exposition.
0:47:28 > 0:47:30There's a minimum of explanation.
0:47:30 > 0:47:35Cos she thinks, my readership will be able to keep up with me, and if they don't, too bad.
0:47:35 > 0:47:39They're going to have to struggle initially, but it will be worth it in the end.
0:47:39 > 0:47:44So she's of a generation where film has informed her writing as much as anything she's read.
0:47:47 > 0:47:51Baraldi found inspiration for her horror writing style
0:47:51 > 0:47:54from literary classics familiar to British readers.
0:48:18 > 0:48:21"She takes a last look in the gilded mirror,
0:48:21 > 0:48:24"a mirror that wouldn't be out of place in a fairy tale,
0:48:24 > 0:48:29"a fairytale that's frightening but where she's the fairest of them all,
0:48:29 > 0:48:34"beautiful just as she is, smelling of blood."
0:48:34 > 0:48:39They're almost like dark, nasty, black fairy tales.
0:48:39 > 0:48:42And in various respects, she is quite unique.
0:49:14 > 0:49:20Barbara Baraldi has to make her mark in maybe a society that doesn't have the most enlightened views of women.
0:49:20 > 0:49:22So there are various ways to go.
0:49:22 > 0:49:25She went in the way that is kind of a rebellious, punkish way.
0:49:27 > 0:49:29She's probably aiming at younger readership.
0:49:29 > 0:49:32And you wouldn't read one of her books if you were squeamish
0:49:32 > 0:49:36of easily shocked, because you'd put it down very quickly.
0:49:44 > 0:49:50It's taken a long time for the women to come out and Barbara Baraldi is one. But you have other writers.
0:49:50 > 0:49:56You've got Francesca Mazzucato, and a mad writer called Isabella Santacroce,
0:49:56 > 0:49:58who does incredible public events,
0:49:58 > 0:50:02and whose books are almost like, Lewis Carroll goes psycho.
0:50:08 > 0:50:14The women, rather than bringing a sort of softer, cosy version of it, which, for instance a lot of
0:50:14 > 0:50:21British and American female writers do, it is a bit cosy, a bit too convenient,
0:50:21 > 0:50:23like the traditional Miss Marple.
0:50:23 > 0:50:29Although, obviously, some, Rendell are very dark for a psychological point of view.
0:50:29 > 0:50:33But the new Italian women writers bring a feminine touch,
0:50:33 > 0:50:36but a feminine touch which is actually quite bloody.
0:50:36 > 0:50:41And proves an absolutely fascinating contrast with their male counterparts.
0:50:53 > 0:50:58A contemporary of Baraldi's is another Bologna writer, who has brought
0:50:58 > 0:51:04a journalistic rigour to the genre to become the most high profile and successful writer of Italian noir.
0:51:23 > 0:51:29Carlo Lucarelli is the celebrity face of Italian crime fiction,
0:51:29 > 0:51:32even presenting a hugely popular TV show
0:51:32 > 0:51:36where he casts himself as the lead investigator into real crimes.
0:51:41 > 0:51:46He has a very peculiar interest in setting himself up
0:51:46 > 0:51:51as an investigative journalist-cum-historian-cum-writer.
0:51:51 > 0:51:54He wants to combine all three aspects.
0:51:55 > 0:52:00He applied his extraordinary method when researching the character
0:52:00 > 0:52:04of a serial killer in his best-selling novel, Almost Blue.
0:53:02 > 0:53:05"Sometimes my shadow is darker than other people's.
0:53:05 > 0:53:08"I've seen it sometimes when I'm walking along the street.
0:53:08 > 0:53:10"It stains the wall alongside me.
0:53:11 > 0:53:14"Sometimes I get scared that someone will notice it
0:53:14 > 0:53:17"but I can't run away from it because it would follow me,
0:53:17 > 0:53:21"it would spread out stickily and black alongside me.
0:53:21 > 0:53:24"That's why I stay close to the wall."
0:53:24 > 0:53:27We are inside a psychotic mind.
0:53:27 > 0:53:32That is more important than in the world that we see in some of the other Italian crime writers.
0:53:32 > 0:53:34That informs everything. So everything is paranoid,
0:53:34 > 0:53:38everything is strange, schizophrenic and disturbing.
0:53:40 > 0:53:45It was the first Italian crime fiction book which, in my opinion,
0:53:45 > 0:53:52actually integrated perfectly the best of English and American hard-boiled crime fiction elements.
0:53:52 > 0:53:57And brought them alive within an Italian context.
0:54:02 > 0:54:06Lucarelli also used intensive research to dig up his country's
0:54:06 > 0:54:09troubled past for Carte Blanche,
0:54:09 > 0:54:13a novel set during the final months of Italy's fascist regime.
0:54:31 > 0:54:36Lucarelli was frustrated at Italy's failure to properly investigate the fascist period.
0:54:57 > 0:55:02To research Carte Blanche, Lucarelli tracked down a former policeman
0:55:02 > 0:55:04who had served in the fascist police.
0:55:28 > 0:55:31What shocked Lucarelli was that after the war,
0:55:31 > 0:55:38this fascist officer was allowed to continue as a policeman in Italy's post-war democracy.
0:55:56 > 0:56:00Lucarelli's interviews with the policeman would form the basis
0:56:00 > 0:56:04for the character of Commissioner De Luca in Carte Blanche.
0:56:05 > 0:56:08He would go on to feature in a further two novels,
0:56:08 > 0:56:10to form a period crime trilogy.
0:57:01 > 0:57:05By tackling Italy's painful history and embracing the lack of any certain resolution,
0:57:05 > 0:57:11Lucarelli can trace his method back to the roots of Italian noir.
0:57:13 > 0:57:19He identifies in his fellow writers a shared commitment to write more than simple crime stories.
0:57:45 > 0:57:49This is the authentic voice of Italian noir.
0:58:13 > 0:58:16Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:16 > 0:58:19Email subtitling@bbc.co.uk