Italian Noir Detective Fiction
Italian Noir: Finding the Darkness in the Place of Contemporary Light According to Erica Jong, "What is the fatal charm of Italy? What do we find there that can be found nowhere else? I believe it is a certain permission to be human, which other places, other countries, lost long ago" (Earles 1). This humanity she speaks of is one that hides under the surface between the exteriors of beauty and power, reflecting the common Italian ideal, that while something so shallowly beautiful captivates the soul, it does little to stimulate the mind, a clear pun to the Italian culture since they lack the common analytical brain of the intellectual. This harsh, real life view of the world, is reflected and ever present in Italian Noir Detective Fiction, and mirrors the daily realities faced by Italians who are both observers and victims of the organized crime performed by many criminal sanctions of the Mafia. Many of the horrific, jaw dropping stories told by authors of the noir, such as Massimo Carlotto and Andrea Camilleri, are often true stories based on factual crime cases that go unsolved, and therefore reflect the popular notion that life does not always deliver a packaged solution with all of the facts perfectly lined up. This somewhat pessimistic attitude about the reality of humanity presented through Noir Detective fiction is supported and caused by the historical role detective fiction has played in Italy’s culture, the common themes readily perceptible through the texts, the key authors of the noir movements, and the direct stories themselves, which provide the narrative links readily presented in Italy’s literary culture. The origin of detective fiction is credited to the United States, the first mystery ever written being Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Detective fiction did not become a staple of Italian culture right away, but it gradually came into the spotlight of Italian literature by way of