Making Peace with the Past: Detective on the Couch

I have to admit that I love mysteries and thrillers as much as I loved fairytales as a kid. Thus, I was excited when we decided to include an occasional mystery review in the journal’s literary resources column. But then I started to ponder...which mystery or thriller to start with? One of the Nordic psychothrillers that are getting more and more gruesome lately? Or some masterpieces of the hardboiled school, such as one of Chandler’s or Hammett’s books not many readers remember anymore? Then, my unconscious acted decisively and the name of Gianrico Carofiglio and the title of his book, The Silence of the Wave, popped up in my mind. Gianrico Carofiglio is an author with an interesting background—a former anti-Mafia prosecutor involved in investigation of corruption, human trafficking, and organized crime, turned Italian senator, turned novelist. To those familiar with his work, he is mostly known for the Guido Guerrieri (defense lawyer) legal thriller series. However, The Silence of the Wave is a bit different “mystery.” It intertwines three story lines—psychiatry sessions of the hero, carabiniere Roberto; his life and reflection upon it; and dreams of a boy named Giacomo. They all come together in an intriguing finale. Roberto grew up in California, where his father was a policeman. After his father killed himself upon being imprisoned for taking bribes, Roberto and his mother move to his mother’s native Italy. In one session with his psychiatrist, Roberto emphasizes that he is angry with his father “not so much because of the offenses he committed, but because he killed himself and left me alone. Damn it.” (p. 112). Interestingly, in Italy, Roberto becomes a policeman. Because he speaks Spanish, he is recruited to become an undercover agent involved in many international drug operations. As he explains to his psychiatrist, “There are always more drug cases. Potentially, there’s no end to them. The idea that you can defeat the phenomenonwith carabinieri and judges and trials is complete nonsense...the only way to wipe out the whole system and literally bring the Mafia to its knees would be to legalize drugs” (pp. 29, 30). Roberto is good at his job and, at the beginning, likes to live with criminals with whom he is “working” while undercover and having a lot of money. He gradually realizes that this is not how he wants to live, however. During one session, he describes episodes when he felt totally ashamed and helpless, such as watching young girls being raped by narcotraffickers and not being able to do anything about it. His undercover career culminates in one operation after which Roberto became totally disenchanted with his work. He becomes uninterested and depressed and one day is found by one of his colleagues “with a gun in his mouth, wondering if you really didn’t feel any pain when you shot yourself in the head at such close range” (p. 55). There is another reason for his depression, profound guilt, and suicidality, as we find later during one of his sessions...but that is one of the mysteries left to the reader to discover. As mentioned, Roberto ends up seeing a psychiatrist, getting medication, and being in therapy. He is an astute observer who broods about many aspects of therapy. When noticing that his psychiatrist has a separate entrance and exit to his office/waiting area, he contemplates, “Waiting to see a psychiatrist isn’t like waiting to see an orthopedist, for example. No one has any problem admitting he has something wrong with his ankle or his knee. Nobody has any problem meeting an acquaintance in a dentist’s or an ENT’s waiting room. On the contrary, they have a chat and time passes more quickly. But practically everyone has a problem admitting there’s * Richard Balon rbalon@wayne.edu