Three tales of cocaine by three different Italian authors, all veterans of writing novels of crime noir. Here's my write-up of each of the tales:
CAMPAGNA'S TRAIL by Massimo Carlotto
Padua, Italy is the setting for Massimo Carlotto's intense, rapid-fire novella where lines of dialogue snap, crackle and pop like hits of cocaine.
"I believe there is an unbridgeable gap between reality and the way justice is administered." The author's words of hard won wisdom, having himself spent six years in prison for a murder he did not commit, a crime that counts as one of the most controversial legal cases in modern-day Italian history.
Campagna's Trail is a fierce, violent tale containing many such gaps, a tale where we follow Inspector Giulio Campagna in his role as part of the Italian police's flying squad responsible for clamping down on drugs in the city of Padua.
"Giulio Campagna was not a tormented soul, or even a particularly worried one. He tried to maintain his dignity in a myriad of complicated situations, without kidding himself that things were ever going to get better." As we quickly learn, Campagna lands in a very complicated situation - his boss, the head of the flying squad, puts him on a highly dangerous cocaine case he must crack (no pun intended) solo. His mission: to hit the trail and accomplish what the boss wants, thus the title of Massimo's novel compressed in a mere 70 pages. As to exactly who and what the inspector encounters following this high-risk white powder path, here's several markers:
Warm-up - Campagna works with young, attractive Annina Montisci (with her hairdo and wire-rimmed glasses anyone would think she was just another university student not an undercover cop) to arrest an Iranian for international drug trafficking. Turns out, the agreeable gent is only carrying opium. He tells Annina, "Mixed with hashish it's a genuine delight for mind and spirit, beautiful lady." No matter in certain other parts of the world these ingredients to bring delight to mind and spirit are entirely legal - this is Italy, so off to years in jail he goes, a prime example of the gap between reality and justice, the arbitrariness of laws.
Payback - Giorgio Lopez, head of the flying squad, shows Campagna a photo of a handsome man in uniform - a great guy Lopez knew back in training, a man with a wife and two small children. Most unfortunately, he was killed by Tinko Boyev, Bulgarian mafioso who deals in coke at 2,000 kelos per cargo. Since Campagna hasn't always played by regular cop rules, including protecting his boyhood buddy who nowadays is a dealer in coke, Lopez proclaims now is the time to set things straight. Campagna knows going up against a powerful international drug gang solo isn't going to be easy but that's the way it is.
Lifelong Bond - Everybody loves Roberto "Roby" Pizzo, Campagna's childhood chum since what's there not to love - Roby spent years doing manual labor and was a hard working trade unionist but when his big company imported foreigners wiling to work for next to nothing, all the natives from Padua, including Roby, were fired. Finding himself at the bottom of the social barrel, Roby turned to dealing drugs - in his own mind, all for a good cause: men and women doing shit jobs for shit pay could at least get some comfort, all paid for by their hard-earned cash. Also, Roby is taking away some of the money from foreign drug dealers.
International Police Training - One intriguing and somewhat humorous part of Campagna's interrogating one of his suspects: "This was the system used by police in America; Campagna had learned it from watching NYPD Blue. Suspects were always asked to write out their statements; once they had been set down in their own handwriting, they were harder to deny." Nothing like a seasoned inspector from Italy picking up tricks of the trade from American law enforcement via the boob tube.
TV Redux - Our inspector does enjoy cops and robbers TV shows: "He immediately fell asleep in front of the television, during a programme about the kidnapping of a surveyor linked to a dodgy politician. The thugs involved were so pitiful that they made Roby Pizzo and his gang look great." I do appreciate Massimo Carlotto injecting elements of humor into a serious story filled with life and death consequences rippling through society.
International Thriller - Make no mistake, this is a tale touching on riveting issues: explosive social and economic conditions pressing men and women into a life of drugs and crime, the ever present human craving for intense, enjoyable experience, questions of legality and weighing the odds, loyalty and betrayal, corruption, greed and power.
On a personal note, I found Campagna's Trail to be a most impressive work of dark crime fiction. I plan to read more of the author's novels, beginning with The Fugitive, a fictionalized account of his years spend on the run taking him to Mexico. Also, The Colombian Mule, another tale of the international world of crime and hard drugs.
Massimo Carlotto, born 1956
THE SPEED OF THE ANGEL by Gianrico Carofiglio
A novelist frequents a café since he finds it the best place to concentrate on his writing. One day he spots a woman sitting next to him wearing a T-shirt and cargo trousers, a lean, slender woman with the fit, muscular body of an athlete. She drops some coins; he picks them up; she thanks him, which leads to a conversation.
Over the next several days they meet again at the café. Without too much prompting, she tells him episodes of her life leading up to her direct encounter with beauty, love . . . and cocaine.
A sweet, tender tale but also a cautionary tale. For Sara, that's the young lady's name, tells the novelist, "There's a saying I like very much. It goes like this: "Don't run faster than your guardian angel can fly."
I've also read Gianrico Carofiglio's The Silence of the Wave. I can assure you, the author is a first-rate storyteller, someone definitely worth reading.
Gianrico Carofiglio, born 1961
THE WHITE POWDER DANCE by Giancarlo De Cataldo
Giancarlo De Cataldo’s violent, white powder fueled tale zooms from the coca growing Valle de los Ríos Apurímac, Ene y Mantaro in Peru to chic social circles in Milan, a tale culminating in a chapter appropriately entitled Grand Finale.
Did I say violent? Perhaps I should have been more descriptive - a brutal, vicious, savage, bloodthirsty, ferocious, frenzied tale. If this sounds extreme, please keep in mind we are talking tons of cocaine and billions of dollars. So saying, allow me to initially focus on the first of the author's five chapters, the one set in a Peruvian valley - and then blast off from there.
CONVOY
Two Land Rover Defenders rumble along the Apurímac River. The man in charge is a stocky Mexican wearing red-framed, mirrored sunglasses who only shows his snake eyes to his equals within the drug cartel, the women he wants and the men he kills. He goes by El Rubio. Among the others - banker Tano Raschillà and guitar playing El Norte to sing the praises of Ed Rubio. Since the US crackdown on Colombians, the Mexicans have taken over, operating as merciless dictators, sadists who enjoy control by terror.
FELIPE
Uncle Jorge takes fifteen-year-old Felipe out of school to join him since he needs help in the fields picking leaves. When you get tired, Uncle tells him, chew one of the leaves. As a four-wheel-drive monster passes, Felipe looks straight at the man with the mirrored sunglasses. He shudders - El Rubio is looking straight back at him.
SPY
No sooner do the Hummers reach base camp then two boys drag out a middle-aged man, his face all blood and mucous, his shirt in shreds, and fling him at El Rubio's feet. They tell the boss this guy, a village teacher, is a spy. The teacher pleads his innocence; El Rubio doesn't want to waste time, the boss shouts: "Away, with him!"
FIESTA
El Rubio negotiates with the producer and a deal is struck. Time for a fiesta to celebrate. Word goes out to everyone, even the harvesters in the fields. Felipe, now wired on cocaine, ignores his uncle and runs off to have some fun.
DEATH
Once at the base camp, the first person he meets is the teacher he recognizes, a teacher who is now nailed to a door of a hut to suffer the agonies of a slow, painful death. The teacher begs Felipe to kill him with the knife on the table. Felipe, having sliced many a throat of a goat or pig or chicken, slices the teacher's throat.
JUSTICE
Felipe is grabbed and brought before El Rubio. The boy violated the boss's order that the teacher suffer a prolonged, painful death for his treason.
What follows is a twist involving guitar playing El Norte who, as it turns out, is not the man El Rubio thought he was. It isn't long thereafter that the US makes a pact with the Peruvian government and Peru sends in special units to kill the drug producers. They succeed, sort of.
When the tale moves to Milan, after more cocaine snorting and highs, more cocaine buying and selling and dealing, more piles of money moving from one hand to another, more violence and killings, numerous killings, the names of El Norte, Tano Raschillà, El Rubio and even Felipe pop up again as if stock characters in the white powder dance that keeps an entire population and society hip-hopping at top speed.
Giancarlo De Cataldo, born 1956
Comments
Post a Comment