Via delle Oche (De Luca Trilogy, Book 3) | 
 enlarge | Author: Carlo Lucarelli
Creator: Michael Reynolds
Publisher: Europa Editions
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $1.84
You Save: $13.11 (88%)
New (43) Used (16) from $1.44
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 136703
Media: Paperback
Pages: 160
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 1933372532
Dewey Decimal Number: 853.914
EAN: 9781933372532
ASIN: 1933372532
Publication Date: June 3, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Thank you for looking at Bookscorner1. May have shelf wear and remainder mark.
Tell A Friend
Add to Wishlist
Add to Wedding Registry
Add to Baby Registry
| |
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
It is 1948. Italy s fate is soon to be decided in bitterly contested national elections. A man has been found dead in via delle Oche, at the center of Bologna s notorious red light district. Commissario De Luca is unwilling to look the other way when evidence in the man s death points to local politicians and members of the Bologna police force. The brutal worlds of crime and politics conspire once again, and in this third and final book in the De Luca trilogy, winner of both the Italian Mystery Award and the Scerbanenco Prize, violence, power, and sex combine to create an atmosphere that becomes more volatile as the trilogy reaches its shocking finale.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 I wish this trilogy were an open-ended series November 6, 2008
L. J. Roberts (Oakland, CA)
First Sentence: From the wall a giant Cossack was watching him with a fierce look in his eyes, a bearskin adorned with the red star on his head, and a bayonet between his teeth, one eye deformed by an air bubble trapped beneath the paper.
It's 1948, Italy is recovering after the way and Comm. De Luca is a cop assigned to vice in Bologna. Within days, there have been four closely related murders that no one particularly wants him to investigate. But no matter the division to which he's assigned, De Luca will never turn his back on bringing a killer to justice.
This may have been a novella, but it was fully packed. Lucarelli conveys the instability and uncertainty of the time as a backdrop to a classic police procedural. We don't know a lot about De Luca except the single most important fact: he is a cop, no matter the political pressures being brought to bear. At the same time, he is certainly human in his problems with eating, insomnia and his trademark trench coat.
I'm sorry there are only the three books and I'd love to know more about where De Luca goes from here. Italophiles, those interested in this period of history and those who like a good police procedural should enjoy this.
Post-WW II political wrangling in Italy July 26, 2008
Blue (Washington, DC United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Carlo Lucarelli taps into the deep well of Italian cynicism for this continuing saga of Commissario De Luca, the last honest cop in the country, as the parties of the Left and Right duke it out in an apparently meaningless contest for power. Against that political backdrop, Lucarelli spins a credible murder mystery that centers on the "honest prostitutes" working the city of Bologna.
Italy in 1948 was a tough neighborhood for anyone trying to get on with a normal life after many years of the Fascist regime and five years of the war. Lucarelli is terrific at giving the reader a realistic look at the environment of the time.
"Via Delle Oche" is the third book in this series now in translation and print by Europa Editions. "Carte Blanche" and "The Damned Season" chronicle earlier adventures of the indefatigable Commissario De Luca and are well worth reading.
 Post war Italy July 18, 2008
Albert A. Chambers (Cincinnati, OH USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a well written snapshot of the struggle in post war Italy between the communists, the church and secular moderates and right wing.
Very little character development goes on. I would recommend this to Italophiles. As a mystery it is ok not great.
"Who knows, maybe I've always been a whore down deep." July 4, 2008
anomie (a swiftly tilting planet)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Via Delle Oche, the third novel in the De Luca trilogy from Carlo Lucarelli finds Commisario De Luca back in Bologna. It's April 1948, and although De Luca has survived the downfall of Mussolini's government, he's now demoted to Special Sub Commisario assigned to the vice squad.
While prostitution is legal (and remained so until 1958), it is an industry regulated and policed by the state, and this is where De Luca comes in. One of his jobs is to ensure that the bordellos follow the rules, and this includes the mandatory turnover of the staff every 15 days. Harassing prostitutes, checking licenses and paperwork is hardly glamorous work, and it's in this degrading position that De Luca once again becomes involved in solving murders.
The novel begins with De Luca's first day on the job, and he has a reunion of sorts with an old acquaintance, Pugliese. Pugliese notes that both men have "made it through," while others have not been so fortunate. De Luca is not a political creature, and he always views himself as a policeman first and foremost--regardless of which political party his boss may belong to. But in spite of the fact that De Luca has largely managed to evade the stain of Mussolini's government, these are still dangerous times. While the war is over, there are many changes afoot. With Mussolini gone, there's a strong possibility of the country swinging away from the right with the election of a communist government, but there are also extremely powerful forces determined to ensure that the communists lose and that the Christian Democrats take power.
Against this backdrop of unsettling political times De Luca begins to investigate the death of Ermes Ricciotti, an employee in one of the bordellos on Via Delle Oche. While Ricciotti's death has been staged to appear a suicide, De Luca knows immediately that this was murder. But what's so puzzling is that De Luca's superiors insist that the case is closed.
Soon more corpses appear, and they are all the corpses of communists. Warned off the case, De Luca faces sexual temptation in the form of a luscious prostitute, but those who attempt to bribe and alternately threaten De Luca from his pursuit of the killer don't know what they are dealing with. Quiet, contemplative, and above all stubborn, De Luca's chronic dyspepsia always returns and becomes the physical manifestation of his conscience as he struggles with a case. And while it may be in De Luca's self-interest to keep quiet, he really can't stop himself from his dogged determination to solve the crimes.
Once again Lucarelli presents De Luca as an individual caught up in the disturbing background of political events, and once again while De Luca feels that politics have little to do with police work, the volatile political situation in Italy is responsible for the quagmire he faces. The fascist dictatorship of Mussolini is gone, but there are powerful, subtle forces at work that will ensure that the communists do not take power. As Italy's politics are effectively poisoned for the next several decades, the seeds of collusion between the corrupt Italian government and organized crime are sown. The cold war looms, and paramilitary organizations will seem to dissolve only to resurface under new names. Operation Gladio, internal subversive operations and the subsequent Strategy of Tension all lie ahead in Italy's clandestine systems, but at this time, on election eve of 1948 most Italians still labour under the illusion that they have choices and can vote for democratic change. Italy will suffer through decades of subterfuge, but in 1948 power was seized; it's just that people didn't know it. And De Luca, who doesn't really care which political party the murderers or their victims belong to, simply wants to solve crimes.
Lucarelli's marvelous introduction explains how he met a policeman who had served forty years--from 1941-1981, surviving regime changes and sweeping political upheavals during the course of his career. Obviously this meeting served as the inspiration for the unforgettable character of De Luca--a mild mannered man who just wants to do his job. Recreating a crucial, explosive time in Italy's history, Lucarelli successfully captures time and place in Via Delle Oche--a spectacular conclusion to this marvelous trilogy.
|
|
|
