Jennifer Palmer has read crime fiction since her teenage years & enjoys reviewing within the many sub-genres that now exist; as a historian who lectures on real life historical mysteries she particularly appreciates historical cime fiction.
The presentation of this book beautifully illustrates the title - the cover is totally black, the dust cover black on cream and the divisions between the sections use black endpapers. The title, however, is more than a colour reference. This is a noir crime novel that describes a lethal world. A dark dark story set in a forgotten part of Italy while finding the amoral attitudes and behaviours of the violent protagonists horrifying.
The initially nameless narrator begins with a trek through the Aspromonte mountains of Southern Calabria, only possible to a hardened native of that area of Italy. He expands on the characters of his companions, the clever Luciano and the lazy Luigi. They are a battle hardened triumvirate who have been dealing in kidnapping, armed robbery and contract killing through their teenage years. The narrator’s father is a goatherd with a side trade in keeping kidnap victims, known as ‘swine’, hidden in the mountains for the local crime lord. The three boys grow up being violent and amoral with their only redeeming feature being their deep loyalty to each other.
The traditional lifestyle of these poor mountain people with their fierce love of their mountains, contempt for those from other parts of Italy and harsh code of behaviour is unsettling to read about. There are fascinating tales about the past told by elderly men at special holidays and explanations of what first seem like arcane habits such as building piles of small stones on the paths leading up the mountains.
Gradually, this dark tale turns darker as the group move to Milan in the 1980s and 1990s to deal in heroin and cocaine. Amassing much money while making new enemies and wreaking revenge on old ones. The narrator is convinced that they have blackened their souls by their activities but also believes that they cannot behave in any other way.
There are a lot of special terms to get to understand. Such as the Calabrian version of the Mafia is the ‘Ndrangheta. The portrayal of the protagonists is a totally unsympathetic one, making this a difficult read but the picture of such an alien world is a gripping one.
