A Fine Line

March 14, 2016
Carofiglio’s fifth Guido Guerrieri novel (after 2011’s Temporary Affections) edges gracefully over the line from legal thriller into the realm of Paul Auster, as much a series of philosophical musings on life as a mystery. Guerrieri, a middle-aged lawyer in Bari, Italy, who spends more time eating well than drinking these days, hires attractive PI Annapaola Doria, a former freelance crime reporter, to help him defend a judge, Pierluigi Larocca, who’s charged with corruption. But the case against Larocca is incidental to Geurrieri’s thoughts on getting older, his witty observations of his colleagues (a legal trainee has the “expression of a psychotic pigeon”), and his struggle with his attraction to Annapaola. It’s a combination that works because of Guerrieri’s strong narrative voice and wry sense of humor. Readers looking for hard-boiled (or even soft-boiled) investigating might be disappointed—most of that’s handled off-page by Annapaola—but there are enough great courtroom cross-examination scenes to satisfy readers who want them.

May 15, 2016
Is it a lawyer's job to seek justice or defend his client? In the fifth Guido Guerrieri novel (following Temporary Perfections, 2011), the veteran avvocato knows it's the latter but faces a strong test of his faith in the judicial system. A sharp-minded but solitary soul with a penchant for conversing with the punching bag hanging in his living room, Guido is approached by a prickly but highly respected judge who, to Guido's surprise, has found himself under investigation for taking bribes. What follows is in some ways a legal procedural. As Guido undertakes the defense with almost too-easy success, Carofiglio's deep knowledge of the law (he himself is a former anti-Mafia judge in the novel's setting of Bari, Italy) is fully evident and interesting in its own right. But the author's real interest is in larger questions of morality, ethics, personal codes, and responsibility to society. This dialogue-heavy novel moves at a languid pace, but thoughtful readers drawn to the theme and the Adriatic setting will find it just their cup of espresso.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)