The Past Is a Foreign Country

May 17, 2010
Set largely in the southern Italian city of Bari, this stylish psychological thriller from Carofiglio (A Walk in the Dark) fuses Jack Kerouac's On the Road with hard-edged crime fiction à la Henning Mankell's Inspector Wallander saga. When model law student Giorgio Cipriani meets charismatic philosophy student Francesco Carducci, he becomes enthralled by Francesco's dangerous lifestyle. Within weeks, Giorgio has abandoned his studies for high stakes poker games in which he and his newfound mentor cheat players out of large sums of money. Giorgio soon finds his life filled with late-night poker scams, drinking, drugs, and sexual encounters with random women. When Francesco manipulates him to take a "holiday" in Spain, Giorgio realizes just how completely he's forsaken his past. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Chiti of the Bari police tries to identify an elusive criminal who's been assaulting local women. The intertwining plot lines build to a haunting ending.

April 1, 2010
As a series of rapes terrorize the city of Bari in the Apulia region (Italy's boot heel), three young men must confront their dark sides. One thinks he might be sliding into madness. The second abandons his desire to be an attorney and is seduced into a life of crime. The third is a sociopath. VERDICT Former Mafia prosecutor Carofiglio ("A Walk in the Dark; Involuntary Witness") packs enough psychological suspense into this tightly woven tale to satisfy readers who crave another Barbara Vine or yearn for Georges Simenon's non-Maigret novels.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2010
Changing direction from his legal-thriller series starring Guido Guerrieri (Reasonable Doubts, 2007), Carofiglio offers a noirish thriller about a naive pre-law student who becomes involved with a cardsharp and watches his life spin out of control (think The Talented Mr. Ripley). Giorgio is looking for a little excitement when he befriends the charismatic Francesco at a poker game. Soon Francesco is training Giorgio in the art of bilking suckers, and the pair becomes a formidable team. But poker games are the least of Francescos interests. He lectures Giorgio in his version of Nietzschean philosophy, introduces him to women, and eventually enlists his help in smuggling cocaine from Spain to Italy. Giorgio knows hes in too deep but is powerless to extricate himselfuntil the formidable Lieutenant Chiti, with shades of Dostoyevskys Porfiry Petrovich, enters the picture, on the trail of a serial rapist. Carofiglio establishes the mood earlywe feel Francesco setting the hook in Giorgio and slowly, excruciatingly reeling him inand then he heightens the tension by jumping back and forth in time, revealing a little but not enough to allow us to relax. As Francesco plays Giorgio, so Carofiglio plays the reader.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)