WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWS

We've covered many a tale of commercial sex and murder. Sadomasochism, kidnapping and hardened criminals are no strangers to us here. But where American and British authors revel in violence and squalor, hoping their prose can ape reality, this Italian Job is far more elegant.

Deftly translated by Christopher Woodall, the tale is told from the point of view of an ex-con turned specialist PI, asked to trace the missing wife of a worried man - a man who waited two weeks before seeking help. His wife, you see, had advertised herself on the internet as a sex slave. He had been complicit. Indeed, he had been with her on an S&M assignation when she was kidnapped - hence his reluctance to tell the police. Like his PI hero, the real-life author has spent time in jail (after a famous miscarriage of justice) and he peppers his plot with several tell-it-like-really-is vignettes of life inside. (Where cops are concerned, forget friendly Italians.) The story is set against the real-life anti-capitalist demonstrations in Genoa, when Italian police went off the rails. Carlotto uses his novel to ask who were the greater offenders against society - but that doesn't clutter the story; it enhances a thoroughly engaging, if chilling, read.