Traitors to All

Starred review from October 14, 2013
First published in 1966, this excellent crime novel from Scerbanenco (A Private Venus) opens with an arresting phrase: “It isn’t easy to kill two people simultaneously.” In the first chapter, an unnamed American woman sends a car with her victims inside plunging into a Milan canal. Her meticulous planning extends well beyond the deed, and by chapter’s end she’s escaped to Phoenix, Ariz. Meanwhile, Dr. Duca Lamberti receives the offer of a large sum of money and a chance to be restored to the medical register if he performs a simple procedure. A bride-to-be, who needs to pass as a virgin to avoid her fiancé’s wrath, requires surgery to her hymen. While the operation proceeds smoothly, the aftermath involves Lamberti in an official investigation into six deaths, all linked to an unsavory attorney. Scerbanenco (1911–1969), for whom the award for the best Italian crime novel is named, smartly and logically weaves all the various plot threads together.

May 1, 2014
After three years in prison for euthanasia, Dr. Duca Lamberti (A Private Venus, 2014) returns to the practice of medicine in an equally unlawful and even more sordid way in this second volume of the noirish Milano Quartet, first published in Italy in 1966.Lamberti's medical license has never been restored, but that amounts to a positive recommendation for Silvano Solvere, who's looking for someone to perform a hymenoplasty on a nice girl who wants her bridegroom to believe that she's never had sex. The procedure goes smoothly enough, and Giovanna Marelli returns to her fiance, butcher Ulrico Brambilla, a virgin once more. Only two things bother Lamberti: the fact that Solvere invoked the name of attorney Turiddu Sompani as an introduction to Lamberti and the fact that he left behind a suitcase to be kept until called for. Sompani's Fiat has just gone into a canal, the Alzaia Naviglio Pavese, with the lawyer and his cousin Adele Terrini, aka Adele the whore, inside. And the suitcase turns out to contain a beautifully engineered submachine gun. With the help of his friend Superintendant Luigi Carrua of the Milan Police, Lamberti decides to accompany Margherita, the young lioness sent to pick up the parcel, to her own drop-off. The trail will take them from private to ever-escalating public vice: a ring of drug and arms smugglers, a rash of deaths past and present, and a shameful betrayal reaching back to WWII.Carrua is right on the money when he tells Lamberti, "[y]ou want to eat up the criminals." This illegal doctor's righteous fury comes to a head with the most admirable character in the cast facing a long prison term.

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Starred review from May 15, 2014

Originally published in 1966 and now finally translated into English, Scerbanenco's first book in his award-winning Milano Quartet, A Private Venus, is an arresting noir novel that examines the themes of alcoholism, deviant sex, remorse, retribution, and murder. Duca Lamberti, the antihero protagonist, is a disbarred doctor just out of prison after serving three years for the assisted suicide of a terminally ill woman. He has a penchant for making bad choices, opposing authority, and being obstinate--a potent mix of personality traits for a successful noir lead character. He is hired by a rich industrialist to babysit his wayward son, an apparent chronic alcoholic. Behind the son's behavior there is a secret--the murder of a young woman. Traitors to All is even more impressive. It's not surprising that it won the most prestigious European crime fiction prize, the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere. The novel is astonishing--bleak to the bone with great dialog, black humor, unforgettable characters, and a complex plot that is not in the least heavy-handed. Duca is asked to investigate a drowning, which the police have dismissed as an accident. The ultimate denouement is thoroughly satisfying. The sense of time and place (1960s Milan) is palpable and impeccable. Scerbanenco's prose is brilliant and disquieting. It's a shock to realize how powerful European noir writing was 40 to 50 years ago. VERDICT Brave and beautiful, these novels are highly recommended for fans of literary noir; Scerbanenco's appellation as godfather of Italian Noir is not hyperbole.--Seamus Scanlon, Ctr. for Worker Education, CUNY

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