Carlo Lucarelli (All press)
- Jul 1 2008
The Nation: In the Lost Realm of the Real - Jun 18 2008
Words Without Borders: "If more historical crime fiction were like Carlo Lucarelli's De Luca trilogy, I'd probably read more of it than I do now." - Jun 10 2008
Houston Chronicle: "Lucarelli is an acute observer of bodies negotiating space, and scenes accurately evoking the physical turmoil of the times . . . serve to frame De Luca's own off-balance person." - May 10 2008
Publishers Weekly (starred review): "Lucarelli’s magnificent final volume in his De Luca trilogy (after The Damned Season and Carte Blanche) delivers a resolution true to the series’ moral relativism." - Jun 26 2007
Detectives Beyond Borders: "The tangled motives, sympathies, animosities and, above, all, relations of power seem an embryonic version of an Italy that will seem familiar from the fiction of Leonardo Sciascia or Michael Dibdin — or from real life." - May 14 2007
The Baltimore Sun: "Lucarelli evokes the raw emotion and helpless anger that Italians felt in the wake of considerable carnage and asks hard questions about culpability and guilt." - May 9 2007
International Noir: "Who's in charge changes, but how business is conducted doesn't. This series, brief as each novel is, is very dark, brooding even, and no one escapes the misery and fear that envelopes everything." - May 9 2007
The Complete Review: "there's very little padding here: the story is stripped almost to its essentials (but without feeling stripped), and that also gives it some of its power." - May 4 2007
Booklist: "The moral ambiguity at the heart of Italy's postwar power struggle permeates the action in this tense, atmospheric tale." - May 4 2007
Library Journal (highly recommended): "This second novel in the De Luca trilogy (after Carte Blanche), told by Lucarelli in spare, flat prose, is emotionally wrenching and aesthetically satisfying." - Apr 20 2007
Kirkus Review: "The middle entry in Lucarelli's early trilogy (Carte Blanche, 2006, etc.) peppers crime fiction with sharp irony and provocative moral ambiguity." - Apr 1 2007
Publishers Weekly: "Few American readers will be familiar with the aftermath of WWII in Italy, and Lucarelli excels at portraying fear and suspicion in a country struggling to recover from its national trauma." - Mar 21 2007
Publishers Weekly: "Lucarelli excels at portraying fear and suspicion in a country struggling to recover from its national trauma." - Jan 17 2007
Chicago Tribune's Bill Adler names Carte Blanche one of 2006's top ten crime novels. - Oct 16 2006
The Guardian: "Lucarelli never loses his perspective on human nature and its frailties, and I look forward to the next two instalments in De Luca's journey through a changing Italy." - Sep 30 2006
Mostly Fiction: "The tone and mood are pure noir stuff, as De Luca lurches around in an insomniac haze watching his back for a partisan bullet." - Aug 24 2006
Washington Post: "While the police work in Carte Blanche is smart and suspenseful, the most striking feature is Lucarelli's textured depiction of life in a society where power is shifting from murderous oppressors to the seething oppressed." - Aug 24 2006
Philadelphia Inquirer: "Lucarelli skillfully forces us to view De Luca's twisted world from the policeman's own skewed perspective." - Jul 20 2006
Chicago Tribune: "As Mussolini's reign and life are about to end, Commissario De Luca, a Roman police officer, gets involved in investigating the stabbing murder of a man with connections all the way to the top of the Fascist food chain." - Jul 10 2006
The Complete Review: "The first in a trilogy, Carte Blanche is lean, compact, and a satisfying police procedural." - Jul 2 2006
San Diego Union-Tribune: "Italy's Carlo Lucarelli proves that the dark and sinister are better evoked when one opts for unadulterated grit and grime." - Jun 27 2006
Publishers Weekly: "In the final year of WWII, while opportunism, desperation and resistance run rampant, Rehinard Vittorio, a well-connected Fascist, drug dealer and philanderer, is stabbed to death and castrated, leaving behind no dearth of suspects." - Jun 14 2006
Austin Chronicle: "Like other great detectives, [De Luca]'s got insomnia and no appetite. He's got a case rife with dire political implications and conflicts of interest, on top on sex, drugs, dark alleys, and dead ends." - May 13 2006
Kirkus Reviews: "Duplicitous women and political cross-currents challenge a seasoned police detective . . . The first volume in a trilogy by noir master Lucarelli . . . is a smart and stylish crime yarn."