INVOLUNTARY WITNESS, first Guido Guerrieri procedural set in Bari, Italy

INVOLUNTARY WITNESS
GIANRICO CAROFIGLIO (Guido Guerrieri #1) {tr. Patrick Creagh}
Bitter Lemon Press
$13.95, available now

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: The first in the Guido Guerrieri series.

A nine-year-old boy is found murdered at the bottom of a well near a popular beach resort in southern Italy. In what looks like a hopeless case for Guido Guerrieri, counsel for the defense, a Senegalese peddler is accused of the crime. Faced with small-town racism fuelled by the recent immigration from Africa, Guido attempts to exploit the esoteric workings of the Italian courts.

More than a perfectly paced legal thriller, this relentless suspense novel transcends the genre. A powerful attack on racism and a fascinating insight into the Italian judicial process, it is also an affectionate portrait of a deeply humane hero.

"Carofiglio writes crisp, ironical novels that are as much love stories and philosophical treatises as they are legal thrillers."—The New Yorker

"Raises the standard for crime fiction. Carofiglio's deft touch has given us a story that is both literary and gritty—and one that speeds along like the best legal thrillers. His insights into human nature—good and bad—are breathtaking." —Jeffery Deaver

Book Two review — Book Three review — Book Four review — Book Five review

THIS BOOK WAS BORROWED VIA INTERLIBRARY LOAN. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARY!

My Review: Avvocato Guido Guerrieri, lawyer of Bari on Italy's southeastern coast, is fast approaching forty, newly separated from his wife of ten lost, bored years, and in the grips of the worst constellation of anxiety symptoms since Mr. Monk on the TV. He's moved into an apartment that he couldn't describe if you held a gun to his head, and he's absolutely unable to muster even a fake interest in his clients' problems. He sits, smiles, nods, files paperwork by rote, and in short lives on autopilot.

And then in walks a woman with a case. No money, but a case.

Non-European citizen Abajaje, Egyptian by birth, wants Guido to defend her...her...co-continental? boyfriend? fellow sufferer from race bias?...Abdou, a Senegalese immigrant and fake handbag selling beach vendor, against charges that he, a multilingual schoolteacher in Africa, with a love for children, did willfully restrain and cause harm to a child. The police are sure he did it; the few witnesses are sure it was him they saw acting strangely and cruising around the beach at the relevant time; what's the big deal here, anyway, he's just a black dude who talked to the kid, must be him who killed little Ciccio.

Except he was in Naples at the time. Guerrieri, in spite of himself, is intrigued by what the case doesn't have, proof, and what it does have, the defendant's improbable, unprovable, but true, alibi. Is truth capable of beating out prejudice in an Italian justice system not known for its love of Veracity, but more for her sister Verisimilitude?

Hmmm.

For 137pp, Carofiglio sets the stage with Guerrieri's craziness, his lackadaisical work habits, his depressed past and anxious present. It's all very nicely written, eg:

"You are intelligent, Avvocato. I have always thought of myself as more intelligent than other people. This is not a lucky thing, but it is hard to understand that.If you think yourself more intelligent than others, you fail to understand a lot of things, until they are suddenly brought home to you. And then it's too late."

Thus Abdou the Non-European citizen to his lawyer in the prison's meeting room. I was regularly able to pause and appreciate the euphony and the accuracy of Carofiglio's writing. It shines through the book that he was a judge, in fact one of the judges who very bravely brought in guilty verdicts against Mafia defendants in the 90s trials that revolutionized the Mezzogiorno (Italy's southern region)'s social structure.

So it's no surprise to anyone that, in the last ~130pp, Carofiglio delivers the best, most complete, court trial I've read between book covers. It's a gem. It's pitch-perfect, and it's so nicely built that I hate to reveal it in detail. It's different than the standard American courtroom drama, because it's about the words, not the deeds, of the players. It's like listening to a fine old radio drama after watching an episode of "Starsky and Hutch" on AntennaTV.

It's a pleasure. I'm delighted to have found Sig. Carofiglio and Avv. Guerrieri at last.