Bandit Love (World Noir)
Carlotto, whose own life has been as eventful (The Fugitive, 2007) as those of his fictional characters, returns with the fifth tale starring Marco Buratti, aka “The Alligator.” Buratti is an unlicensed PI in Padua, a former blues singer, and an ex-con. When Sylvie, the lover of Buratti’s friend and partner in crime, Beniamino Rossini, is kidnapped, Buratti, Rossini, and Max la Memoria (“Max the Memory”) begin a frantic search for her throughout northeastern Italy. Their efforts pit them against corrupt officialdom, bent cops, Serbian spies, and murderous Mafioso from Serbia, Kosovo, and other former Soviet-bloc regions vying to control Italy’s most prosperous area. The timeless Italian idea of vendetta is at the heart of this tale, but the portrait of an Italy rife with corruption, drugs, and vigilantes attacking illegal immigrants seems very New World. And the lovelorn Buratti, who would prefer to be sitting in a seedy club listening to the blues and drinking Calvados, must honor Rossini’s old-school quest for revenge. It’s noir, Italian-style, in the vein of Michael Dibdin’s Blood Rain (2000). --Thomas Gaughan