My Weekly Book

Holy Smoke - Tonino Benacquista

This is a real discovery. I picked it up in the local library where they are having a special promotion called Passport to Murder which is, apparently, designed to broaden the literary horizons of those of us who like to spend our leisure time on books about violence, brutality, murder and torture, be it psychological or physical. London’s librarians have chosen for us a selection of European crime novels in a gesture that seems oddly prescriptive for a genre that is often regarded as pulp fiction. But, speaking empirically, I’ve found plenty of titles to borrow so I guess I would definitely count it a success. In our local branch they are achieving this by very cunningly stacking the ‘Passport to Murder’ promotion titles in special displays on the ends of the regular shelves – not unlike Tesco’s pile-it-high approach to unnaturally large bars of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut or those cereals that can give the unwary sugar poisoning.

[Buy from Amazon] [Search on eBay]

And so to the book. It deals with the struggle of French-Italian immigrant Antonio Polsinelli to come to terms with his past, his family, his cultural heritage and the recent murder of his childhood friend Dario. Unfortunately, shortly before his death, Dario had decided to get his old mate involved up to his neck in all kinds of dodgy dealings that he’d have been far better shot of – and an unexpected bequest just makes it all ten times worse. All Tonio can do is to go back to that little patch of Italy his family used to call home and try and get some perspective on things. Instead he finds himself in a risky game of high-stakes poker with players among whom he should never have even contemplated sitting down at the table. Think big. Think Italian. Make several guesses. Who could we possibly be talking about here?

This is a nice, straightforward 200-page read with an absorbing story, well-plotted enough to keep the pages turning, a lovely luminous sensibility to the language for which the translator Adriana Hunter deserves praise, some delicious, crystalline moments of pure noir (mainly set in Paris) and the always laudable qualities of a big imagination on the author’s part. Plus the hero in really serious shit of a kind you can’t see him escaping from alive – until the biggest Deus Ex Machina on the block is invoked in his defence. On the strength of this I wouldn’t hesitate to pick up another book by this author and would recommend this as an excellent crime tale with serious thoughts on big topics like family and identity just to give it a bit of gravitas alongside its undoubted entertainment value.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 at 11:25 pm and is filed under 2006 reading challenge. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.