2. Uncanny City: Milan and Turin in the Crime Novels of Giorgio Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini

Introduction: Forefathers of Italian Crime Fiction

Milan and Turin have, alongside Naples, been privileged locations for mystery stories since the early stages of the genre in Italy in the late nineteenth century.¹ Nevertheless, they acquired more concrete contours only later with the work of Giorgio Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini, in which the urban setting enables the discourse on post-war transformation. Michele Righini, for example, argues that:

ciò che viene colto dagli autori italiani è un cambiamento che investe il vivere cittadino (prima di diffondersi anche in provincia) […]. È il boom economico degli anni sessanta che rende le nostre città – e la mentalità di chi le abita – più simili a quello che genericamente viene definito il ‘modello americano’, e le configura come terreno fertile per la nascita di quella stessa tradizione poliziesca che abbiamo visto fiorire oltre oceano.²

[what is captured by the Italian authors is a change that affects the life of the urban dweller (before spreading to the provinces as well) […]. It is the economic boom of the Sixties that makes our cities – and the mentality of those who live in them – more similar to what is generically defined as the ‘American model’ and configures them as fertile ground for the birth of that same tradition of crime writing that we have seen flourish overseas.]

In Scerbanenco’s Lamberti novels, Milan ceases to be a neutral backdrop to become, as Jennifer Burns suggests, ‘the habitat which engenders, nurtures and occasionally overmasters the criminals and their crimes’.³ Fruttero & Lucentini have paved the way for the tradition of gialli [detective stories] which, in their own words, look at Turin as ‘la città più enigmatica, o meno nota d’Italia’ [the most enigmatic, or least celebrated city in Italy] and ‘uno straordinario oggetto narrativo’ [an extraordinary narrative object].⁴ The central role of the urban setting is just one aspect of the novelty in Scerbanenco’s and Fruttero & Lucentini’s crime fiction and certainly a crucial one for the present study. Fruttero & Lucentini’s novels, which were met with great acclaim by readers and critics alike, contributed to the calling into question of the hierarchical distinction between high and popular literary genres particularly ingrained in the Italian tradition.⁵ Scerbanenco’s education, which was only up to the compulsory level, and his former employment as an ambulance assistant and columnist for a women’s magazine make him a non-conventional figure within Italy’s conservative literary establishment. Indeed, Burns argues: ‘It is Scerbanenco’s intimate and immediate understanding of “ordinary” Italian society in his gialli set in Italy which makes them compelling, individual, and which allows the reader to witness the emergence of a branch of crime fiction which is rooted in contemporary Italian society and its moral and social functions and malfunctions’.⁶

In order better to contextualize the innovations introduced by Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini, and the importance of the centrality they assign to the concrete urban setting, it is useful to retrace some key stages in the development of the Italian crime genre. Although Italian writers have engaged with mystery stories from as early as the 1880s⁷ and the two decades spanning the 1930s and 1940s have been seen as a ‘golden age’ of the genre in Italy,⁸ the Italian tradition developed gradually and not without some difficulty, especially when compared to the evolution of the genre in countries such as Britain, France and the United States.⁹ Maurizio Pistelli – who has carried out in-depth research on the prehistory of the Italian giallo and the work of proto-detective storywriters such as Emilio De Marchi, Francesco Mastriani, Jarro (pseudonym of Giulio Piccini), Federico De Roberto, Remigio Zena and Matilde Serao – points out that in the mid-nineteenth century stories began to emerge that mixed elements of mystery, suspense and murder.¹⁰ The first proper attempt by Italian authors at detective novels can be traced back to the 1930s and the publication of a series of stories, innovative both in terms of style and narrative techniques, by the writers Alessandro Varaldo, Tito Antonio Spagnol, Augusto De Angelis and Ezio D’Errico.¹¹ By the end of the decade, Scerbanenco, too, had begun experimenting with crime writing, publishing a series of detective stories centred on the character of Arthur Jelling, an archivist at Boston Police Department.¹² The popular Mondadori crime series Libri Gialli began publication in 1929. The series went on to exert a decisive influence on the evolution of the genre in Italy, thanks to its unprecedented success and longevity.¹³ The term giallo, ‘a short-hand term for any type of detective fiction and more widely any story that has a mystery element’,¹⁴ actually comes from the yellow cover of the Mondadori novels. As already noted, initially these mainly consisted of translations of British, French and American authors, but through the years they increasingly attracted Italian writers to the detective genre. Following the shutdown in 1941 of the Libri Gialli (together with all the other editorial initiatives in the field of crime fiction) on account of the Fascist regime, the new Giallo Mondadori series was launched after the war, in 1947, and continued to be published until 1996.¹⁵

The censorious attitude of the Fascist government towards crime stories certainly helps to explain the delay in the emergence of a topographical tradition within the genre of Italian crime fiction. Whilst at first the regime encouraged the publication of home-grown gialli in line with its politics of cultural protectionism,¹⁶ it soon grew more intolerant due to the problematic and unpatriotic image of the country that the stories set in Italy allegedly conveyed. The regime’s stance culminated in the law promulgated in 1937 by the Ministry of Popular Culture which established the rule that no crime story published in Italy should feature an Italian murderer.¹⁷ This intimidating climate led Italian detective-story writers to choose exotic and stereotypical settings for their stories, locations of which the authors often had no first-hand knowledge, as in the case of Scerbanenco’s Jelling novels, set in an imaginary Boston.

It is, therefore, very relevant that Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini choose the material setting of 1960s and 1970s Milan and Turin for their novels, not as a mere background, but as the functional stage for their critical discourse on contemporary Italian society. Whilst Milan had already been the setting for a number of crime stories – most notably, perhaps, Augusto De Angelis’s Commissario De Vincenzi novels – Scerbanenco shaped once and for all the identity of the Northern capital as a noir city able to compete with Boston and Chicago, metropolitan settings of the American hard-boiled, and a role Milan has maintained in the Italian crime-fiction tradition and collective imagination.¹⁸ On the other hand, Fruttero & Lucentini were precursors of a rich tradition of gialli set in Turin from the mid-1970s by authors such as Riccardo Marcato, Piero Novelli, Massimo Felisatti, Bruno Gambarotta and Margherita Oggero.¹⁹ The tendency shown by Italian crime stories to concentrate on metropolitan areas is reaffirmed by the emergence in the 1990s of specifically local traditions, such as the Scuola dei Duri in Milan, the Gruppo 13 in Bologna and the Neonoir in Rome.²⁰

Hence, it is in the time period examined in this book that the seeds for the development of a specifically Italian crime fiction tradition were sown. The 1960s marked a turning point in the debate about the specificity and legitimacy of the Italian crime genre. Until then, critics and writers of detective stories had mostly seen Italian crime stories as escapist reading or mere imitation of the British and American classics.²¹ Another obstacle to the development of a proper Italian crime genre was also believed to be the absence in Italy of big cities able to shape a convincing metropolitan tradition.²² The development of home-grown Italian gialli during the period under scrutiny was fostered by urban changes, for crime fiction makes the impossibility of mastering the city into one of the main triggers of its narrative.²³ In other words, it is not fortuitous that the Italian giallo developed during years of unprecedented urbanization. The following analysis shows that there is clearly an interplay between Italy’s post-war urban renewal and the crime stories of Giorgio Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini.

Part of the appeal of crime fiction is that it discloses a different, subterranean city behind its public façade. This chapter continues, first, to explore the feelings of disorientation and anxiety caused by rapid social change, focusing on aspects of urban life that escape comprehension in the novels of Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini. By drawing attention to these unfathomable aspects of city life it sheds light on the writers’ response to rapid urban growth, the perceived break with tradition and the lack of a constructive critical elaboration of the past. The final two sections examine the link between urban growth and the development of crime with a specific focus on the periphery, a location which in the collective imagination has commonly been associated with elements of the uncanny and eerie. Throughout, the chapter draws on the idea of the uncanny as a feeling of unease that, as Freud argues, arises from the double nature of the familiar. It also refers to Fisher’s analysis of the related concepts of the weird and eerie, which also denote something that exceeds the standard categories with which we apprehend the world. In addition, Vidler’s work on the specific link between the built environment and the experience of the uncanny provides a central reference point. The next section of the chapter draws attention to the unfathomable aspects of city life in an attempt to shed light on the writers’ response to rapid urban growth, the perceived break with tradition and the lack of a constructive critical elaboration of the past.

While it may be argued that the uncanny pertains universally to urban experience, here the aim is to contextualize it within Italy’s rapid process of modernization. The official narrative of the boom period exalted the achieved prosperity, the development of modern lifestyles and the diffusion of new leisure habits; and overshadowed the persistence of more traditional elements in post-war Italian society.²⁴ The transition of the 1950s was far more complex than the picture of widespread optimism suggests and the tension that emerged between tradition and modernity, the new that irrupts into habitual reality, did not offer neat closure. Some of the pre-existing imbalances remained or were, indeed, exacerbated, for any growth in productivity relied on inconsistencies such as the deepening economic gap between the North and South of the country and the large reservoir of cheap labour employed in the Northern industries. As seen in the previous chapter, there is a general consensus among scholars on the continuity of the state in terms of personnel and reactionary policies in the transition from pre- to post-war governments. The inability of the Italian State to implement structural reforms at this crucial point in the nation’s history played a crucial part in the continued existence of unresolved social issues, widespread social dissatisfaction and the socio-political turmoil of the decades which followed.

Mysterious City

Whilst there is a tendency to think that crime literature asserts the power of reason, embodied by the detective who undertakes the enquiry, to shed light on the mysteries of the city and, in so doing, to restore order, in fact modern crime fiction is less concerned with the unitary perspective of the detective than with a distribution of meaning through a multiple-narrative viewpoint that shapes an original account of the city.²⁵ As Philip Howell puts it:

Crime fiction is in truth far less interested or successful in banishing anxieties about the city than is often supposed from a reduction of the genre to the detective or ‘mystery’ fiction […]. The city’s mysteries are ongoing, never conclusively confronted, and victories always partial and often pyrrhic.²⁶

The idea of mastering urban space by claiming a complete knowledge of it is ultimately unrealistic. The contemporary noir tends to reverberate doubt rather than to re-establish the violated order by replacing the final revelation of classic detective stories with a problematic ending which lends itself to a variety of possible interpretations and outcomes.²⁷

Similarly, the Lamberti novels seem to lack a universal sense of justice.²⁸ Let us take the example of Traditori di tutti. In a break from his investigation of an international drug-smuggling network, Duca is spending an idle evening at home, solving crossword puzzles and reading magazines. One headline in particular attracts his attention:

Su una rivista di attualità lesse il titolo Le rivelazioni finali sul più grande traffico di droghe, ma non lesse l’articolo perché lui non credeva alle rivelazioni finali, c’erano due buste di mescalina 6 in giro ed era stupido credere a qualsiasi rivelazione finale sulle droghe, che non finiranno mai. (TT, p. 186)

[In one news magazine he read the headline: The Great Drug-Smugglers. Full Story. But he did not read the article, because he knew that it could not tell the full story. There were still two packets of Mescalin 6 unaccounted for and anyway the drug story was a running serial that would never end and only a fool would believe that it could.] (DM, p. 165)

Not only does Duca question the possibility, suggested in the captivating title, of eradicating organized crime, but he also seems aware that all case solutions are temporary and disclose further mysteries and further solutions in a potentially endless search for meaning. Duca’s slightly neurotic inner thoughts, revealed to us through free indirect speech, may be read as a sign of this predicament, which questions the very possibility of any positive conclusion in Scerbanenco’s novels. Vidler points out that feelings of uncanniness often arise in response to things that exceed our comprehension and provoke bewilderment.²⁹ The city, a reality of which we can only have partial and fragmentary knowledge, has indeed been the privileged setting for uncanny experiences in modern culture. Milan is no exception. For Duca it often elicits confusion and incomprehension. The Lamberti novels mirror the epistemological gap in our understanding of the city in three main ways: through their open and problematic endings; by registering Milan’s increasing violence; and, finally, through urban descriptions which emphasize the qualities of the built environment that elicit uncanny feelings.

The Lamberti novels leave us with an uncomfortable feeling. They convey the idea that honest people who become caught up in dangerous situations are the primary victims of widespread corruption and criminality in contemporary Milanese society. For order to be partially and momentarily restored at the end of the story, there is always someone who pays a high price. Intriguingly, this is usually a woman. In Venere privata Livia Ussaro is left disfigured by a gangster while helping Duca in his investigation into a prostitution ring. In Traditori di tutti Susanna Paganica will probably face a life sentence for the murder of Turiddu Sompani and Adele Terrini, hardened criminals who betrayed and killed her father during the Second World War.³⁰ In Scerbanenco’s crime novels female characters are either presented as morally irreprehensible (as in the case, for instance, of the young teacher Matilde Crescenzaghi in Traditori di tutti) and as such somehow more likely to become victims; or they embody a model of modern, emancipated femininity (Livia Ussaro) that is seen as potentially dangerous and subversive. Scerbanenco’s depiction of femininity mirrors anxieties about social and urban changes, for it is a disruptive force that challenges fixed gender roles and traditionally demarcated spaces. The threatening idea of femininity is more pronounced when the perpetrator is a woman. In I ragazzi del massacro both the victim and perpetrator are women, albeit of a very different kind: the young teacher Matilde Crescenzaghi embodies the values of integrity and human compassion, while her persecutor, Marisela Domenici, is an alcoholic and drug addict whose only pursuit in life is avenging the death of her partner, which she blames on Matilde. By raising concerns with the police about their son Ettore, who is one of her students, Matilde leads to the incrimination and temporary incarceration of Marisela and her partner. The latter, who already suffers from a number of health conditions, dies shortly after in prison. Years later Marisela takes revenge by meticulously arranging the murder of Matilde at the hands of her own students.

The extreme violence that permeates the novels is a further indication of the difficulty of making sense of the new Milan. People who have been left behind by economic growth and are less able to benefit from the new opportunities offered by the modern city are more likely to turn to crime or end up in dangerous situations. In another scene from Traditori di tutti Duca is once again reading the newspaper. The front-page headlines and the local news on the inside pages, which reports brutal crimes mostly involving vulnerable young people, trigger Duca’s monologue about the reality of senseless violence in present-day Milan:

Non portiamo più coltelli, sciabole, e spade, e allora ammazziamo con quello che troviamo a portata di mano, – disse Duca –, quando siamo in auto prendiamo il cacciavite dal cassetto del cruscotto e sfondiamo il collo di quello che ci ha sorpassato a destra. A casa, invece, nel sano ambiente domestico, tra gli utili arnesi casalinghi, scegliamo forbici e con cinquanta sessanta colpi, finiamo l’amico che non ci ha restituito del denaro prestato. (TT, p. 118)

[We no longer carry daggers, swords and sabres, said Duca, so we kill with whatever comes to hand. When we’re in a car, we grab a spanner from the toolbox, and crack the skull of the man who passed us on the wrong side. At home, however, in our cosy, domestic surroundings, we look through the household equipment, and choose a pair of scissors with which to stab (some sixty times) a friend who has failed to return the money we lent him.] (DM, p. 106)

Duca describes a corrupt society in which people kill for petty reasons or in a fit of temper, using whatever weapons are at hand – a spanner, a pair of scissors – ordinary objects with a practical, banal use. The fact that, as Barbara Pezzotti points out, Scerbanenco’s murderers are ‘mostly greedy, stupid people who become irrational for squalid and trivial reasons’³¹ reveals that rapid post-war growth has enhanced individualistic and competitive orientations and has deepened the discrepancy between the rich and poor. Ginsborg writes that the boom ‘lacked the dimension of collective responsibility’.³² By neglecting the communitarian and public dimensions of economic transformation, post-war modernization ultimately reinforced Italian society’s traditional emphasis on the family and self-reliance.³³ The characters-turned-criminals in the Milan of Scerbanenco operate in the type of environment that is dominated by a culture of individualism and economic interest. Through frequent urban descriptions infused by shadiness and desolation, Scerbanenco emphasizes the characters’ isolation and moral corruptibility.

In the monologue quoted above Duca goes on to liken Milan to Marseille, Chicago and Paris, traditionally noir cities:

C’è qualcuno che non ha ancora capito che Milano è una grande città, non hanno ancora capito il cambio di dimensioni, qualcuno continua a parlare di Milano, come se finisse a Porta Venezia o come se la gente non facesse altro che mangiare panettoni, o pan meino. Se uno dice Marsiglia, Chicago, Parigi, quelle sì che sono metropoli, con tanti delinquenti dentro, ma Milano no, a qualche stupido non dà la sensazione della grande città, cercano ancora quello che chiamano il colore locale, la brasera, la pesa, e magari il gamba de legn. Si dimenticano che una città vicina ai due milioni di abitanti ha un tono internazionale, non locale, in una grande città come Milano, arrivano sporcaccioni da tutte le parti del mondo, e pazzi, e alcolizzati, drogati, o semplicemente disperati in cerca di soldi. (TT, pp. 118–19)

[There are still people who don’t realize that Milan is a great cosmopolitan city. They have failed to notice that the scale of things has altered. They talk about Milan as though it ended at the Porta Venezia, and as though the people ate nothing but panettoni and pan meino. Mention Marseilles, Chicago or Paris, and everyone knows you’re talking of a wicked metropolis, but with Milan, it’s different. Surrounded as they are by the unmistakable atmosphere of a great city, there are still idiots who think of it in terms of local colour, looking for la brasera, la pesa, and mangari [sic] il gamba de legn. They forget that a city of two million inhabitants is bound to acquire an international flavor. There’s precious little left nowadays of the old local colour. From all over the world, spivs and layabouts are converging on Milan in search of money.] (DM, pp. 106–07)

The contrast between the past and the current situation of Milan as a great cosmopolitan city that attracts people of every kind and has seen a rise in violent crime is emphasized here by references to popular Lombard recipes such as the pan meino and panettoni and other lost elements of the local lore (brasera, pesa and gamba de legn), which belong to tradition and some people insist on identifying with Milan.

Urban descriptions in the Lamberti novels emphasize the unfathomable and unsettling aspects of metropolitan life, for example through their ‘meteorological observations’.³⁴ Fog in particular has been a trademark of Milan as an industrial, bleak city in literary and cinematic representations, not only in Bianciardi’s La vita agra but also, for instance, in Visconti’s Rocco e i suoi fratelli and Antonioni’s La Notte [The Night] (1961). In I ragazzi del massacro Duca looks out of the office window to discover that the streets of Milan are covered in a blanket of fog. It is nearly dawn and he has spent the night at police headquarters, interrogating the eleven students involved in the murder of their teacher Matilde, while at home his little niece is unwell and will die shortly afterwards of complications from pneumonia:

Guardando oltre la finestra, nella nebbia e nella notte, d’un tratto Duca vide che i due fanali più vicini si erano spenti, la nebbia, per un momento fu solo una nera macchia d’inchiostro, poi si accese di qualche cosa di chiaro e di rosa: era il nuovo giorno che cominciava, e di attimo in attimo la nebbia si accendeva di rosa.³⁵

[Looking out of the window, into the fog and into the night, Duca noticed that the two nearest lights had gone out suddenly and the fog, which for a moment was just a black ink stain, was lit up by something clear and pink: it was the new day that was beginning; and with each passing moment the fog took on more and more of a pinkish glow.]

The break of the new day seems to suggest that hope is still possible even in the most difficult of times. It is, however, just a feeble light which struggles to plough through the thick fog that engulfs people and things. Fog becomes a clue to the mysterious side of the city, another embodiment of the Other. Its presence here emphasizes the emotional and moral isolation of the characters. Due to its flattening and de-individualizing effect, fog can also facilitate crime. In I ragazzi del massacro it conceals and somehow protects Marisella Domenici when, ‘in quella sera di nebbia densa’ [on that evening of dense fog],³⁶ she breaks into the school where Matilde teaches evening classes for disadvantaged young people from the area and kills her.

Scerbanenco’s topographical accuracy functions to root the stories in the Milan of the 1960s. In Venere privata Milan is mentioned thirty times; its streets and squares eighty-one times, some of them more than once.³⁷ Traditori di tutti features a long car chase sequence, which starts from Duca’s flat in the via Imola 3, continues across Milan’s city centre and then leads outwards towards the villages of the hinterland. The reader can trace the itinerary almost as if on a map thanks to the abundance of topographical details. Whilst the attention to details of site and setting, such as street names and real public buildings, is, therefore, the pre-condition for the verisimilitude intended to ground shared knowledge of the city,³⁸ accurate urban descriptions are counteracted by the abstract darkness that suffuses places. Milan is often portrayed at night when familiar places appear weirdly deformed and illegal actions take place more easily. In the extract below, Susanna Paganica has managed to hitch a lift into town from a passing car after murdering Turiddu Sompani and Adele Terrini. She asks to be dropped off in a deserted service area on the periphery of Milan, from where she intends to take a taxi to her hotel and then a second one to the airport, where she will board a flight bound to the United States: ‘Era stato un passaggio pericoloso, ma anche qui non poteva farci niente, sola nello smisurato piazzale all’estrema periferia di Milano, nel dolce ma un po’ freddo vento di fine aprile, ebbe paura’ [It had been a dangerous ride, but she had had no choice. Only now, alone in this neat little square [sic] on the very edge of the city of Milan, did she realize that she was frightened. It was a mild night, towards the end of April, but there was a cool breeze blowing] (TT, p. 15; DM, p. 14). The description, which reflects Susanna’s subjective perception of the place – the qualities of emptiness and vastness, the cool April wind that blows across the deserted square – exemplifies well the idea of the uncanny as an emotional and mental emanation, a quality ascribed to places rather than inherent in them. Marginal and neglected places like the above service area, an anonymous, transitory environment, are privileged sites for the resurfacing of feelings of uncanniness. As Vidler points out, it is in the ‘darkest recesses and forgotten margins’ of space that what has been repressed resurfaces more readily.³⁹ It is also interesting to note that the adjective smisurato [immeasurable] in the extract above, the analogous sterminato [endless] (used elsewhere) and the augmentative suffix -one, as in ‘sterminati vialoni’ [endless avenues],⁴⁰ all hint at places perceived as weirdly enlarged and therefore at the difficulty of assimilating Milan’s new-scaled spaces.

Other examples may be provided of how, in the Lamberti novels, places appear weirdly out of proportion, strange and almost exotic. In the extract below from I milanesi ammazzano al sabato, Duca is on his way to meet Amanzio Berzaghi to tell him that his daughter, who was kidnapped by a criminal group, has been found dead. Duca’s gloomy thoughts are projected onto the passing urban landscape framed by the car window: ‘Le strade alle dieci e mezzo erano quasi deserte, l’Alfa percorse in tutta la sua lunghezza piazza della Repubblica, nella sua oscura vastità sahariana’ [The streets at half past ten were almost deserted, the Alfa travelled the entire length of the Piazza della Repubblica, in its dark Saharan vastness].⁴¹ Dark, immersed in a sort of haze that makes it difficult to distinguish its features, the Piazza here has elements of the eerie. Fisher argues that the weird and eerie share ‘a preoccupation with the strange’, that is, with the ‘outside’.⁴² The latter comprises everything that lies ‘beyond our standard perception, cognition and experience’.⁴³ The Piazza is apprehended by reference to something else and foreign (the Sahara Desert), suggesting that the familiar has turned strange and existing reference points have shifted. In the following example from Venere privata the modern tower blocks that project themselves against the rural landscape of Milan’s hinterland resemble ‘new isolated cathedrals in the desert’:⁴⁴ ‘Era l’unica costruzione fra tutti quei campi, una torre grigio celeste a dodici piani, gigantesca e avveniristica, così isolata, e che pure rammentava i monumentali templi aztechi che sorgono ogni tanto in selvaggi deserti’ [It was the only building among all those fields, a twelve-storey blueish grey tower, gigantic and futuristic, standing there isolated, and which yet was reminiscent of the monumental Aztec temples that rise up every now and then in wild deserts] (VP, p. 183). The extract provides a further example of the perception of the built environment as grotesque, disharmonious and out of place. The mismatch between the modern building and rural environment highlights the impact of industrialization and the urbanization of the outskirts. Lefebvre argues that the receding of the natural environment in contemporary societies due to urbanization and population growth is often experienced as bewilderment or nostalgia.⁴⁵ Here, the incorporation of the countryside into the city conveys inconsistency and disorientation. Once again the changing built environment evokes Otherness, as Duca likens the tower block to an Aztec temple springing up unexpectedly in a deserted area. The frequent association of places within the city with the desert points to the isolation encompassing the characters in the novels. Moreover, the lack of life once again conjures up an eerie feeling.⁴⁶

The following extract from Traditori di tutti describing a car chase includes many of the elements of the urban uncanny as ‘the slippage or mismatch between our expectations of the city […] and the often surprising and unsettling experiences it can evoke’:⁴⁷

E la cavalcata nella notte continuò, dopo piazza Cinque Giornate la Giulietta uscì dai bastioni, chi sa perché, e prese Viale Montenero, viale Sabotino, resi teatrali dall’ora notturna, dalla vuotaggine, dai lampeggianti gialli agli incroci, dall’ultimo trani aperto con l’insegna luminosa Crota Piemunteisa che tremolava, priva delle spente lettere r u a, e poi viale Bligny e viale Col di Lana, e insomma tutta la cerchia della semiantica Milano coi pezzi ancora residui e architettonicamente conservati o spesso ricostruiti, per i turisti, dei bastioni dai cui spalti, un tempo, pare, vigilavano prodi armigeri. (TT, pp. 53–54)

[The little cavalcade rolled on through the night. After the Piazza Cinque Giornate, the Giulietta, for some reason, left the ramparts, and drove by way of the Viale Montenero and the Viale Sabotino, dramatically silent and deserted at this hour. At the crossroads, a solitary night-club was still open. Yellow light streamed from its doorway, and a flickering neon sign above it read Crota … Piemunteisa, the letters rua having failed to light up. They then went along the Viale Bligny and the Viale Col di Lana, in other words they circled the whole of the old quarter of Milan, where many ancient buildings still stood, some heavily restored for the benefit of the tourists. On either side there were bastions and ramparts, once, no doubt, manned by valiant soldiers.] (DM, pp. 48–49)

In the night time the presence of blinking yellow traffic lights and a flashing neon sign that is missing a few letters make the deserted streets seem oddly ‘theatrical’. Interestingly, here urban history makes one of its rare appearances in Scerbanenco’s crime novels, which, as Burns points out, generally portray a Milan ‘of the moment’, devoid, that is, of historical depth.⁴⁸ The ancient buildings, however, are mainly a reconstruction for tourists and the ghosts evoked from the past contribute to eliciting an impression of artificiality and spatial estrangement. The old quarter, restored for the benefit of tourists, is emblematic of the de-realization of urban space in neo-capitalist societies. This is especially evident in the centres of major glocal cities, which have either become the domain of the rich who can afford luxury apartments or a recreational park for tourists.⁴⁹

In Fruttero & Lucentini’s La donna della domenica and A che punto è la notte Turin is also elusive and difficult to pin down. The city’s inward character and tendency to secrecy⁵⁰ have inspired many contemporary crime writers, who have followed in the footsteps of La donna della domenica and its international success. Turin is an emblematic and, in some respects, anomalous Italian city. It was the seat of the Italian monarchy and the first capital of the country in 1861; in the course of the twentieth century it developed into a major industrial centre and the home of the Italian automotive industry, attracting immigrant workers from all over the country and especially from the more deprived South. In the public mind Turin is linked, like Milan, to the values of a work ethic and efficiency. As Pezzotti points out, however, Turin has also traditionally been seen as mysterious, a place associated with black and white magic, an original combination that has inspired Italian crime writers.⁵¹ In La donna della domenica the impenetrability of Turin is best embodied by the aloofness of its dwellers and especially of its upper classes, to whom the book refers as ‘l’ambiente’ [the milieu or inner circle]: an exclusive environment with its own distinct etiquette and social norms which can only be accessed by right of birth. Fruttero & Lucentini establish a specular relation between the city, a fully-fledged character in the story, and its aristocratic milieu. Much like the latter, the city of Turin is conspiratorial and treacherous while pretending to be sober and detached. The Turinese setting provides the condition for the plot to take specific turns and for the characters to act in the way they do. It is the city itself which somehow evokes the solution of the murder case for the investigating hero, Inspector Santamaria. We read that ‘l’idea venne al commissario la domenica mattina […]. A dargli un aiuto nel suo solito modo negativo e circonlocutorio fu forse la città’ [The idea came to the Inspector on Sunday morning [...]. Perhaps, in its usual negative and circumlocutory way, it was the city that lent him a hand] (DD, p. 429; SW, p. 354).

The main character is constructed in a way that helps the reader to navigate Turin, maintaining critical, and even ironic, distance. His moving across several urban-social milieux means we are able to form a multifaceted view of the city of Turin. Inspector Santamaria has a sense for social manners and the confidence to move within Turin’s upper-class environment. A Sicilian immigrant, Santamaria fought in Piedmont in the Resistance; he is, therefore, as Franco Mannai suggests, both an insider and an outsider who discloses an insightful point of view on Turinese society.⁵² His superiors entrust Santamaria with knowledge of Turin’s high-society circles and appoint him to investigate the murder case of the architect Garrone, a bizarre individual who somehow gained access to that exclusive environment:

In realtà, i suoi superiori non avevano idea di cosa fosse quell’‘ambiente’ di cui gli attribuivano una così profonda conoscenza. Sapevano – oscuramente – che la differenza tra chi contava e chi no, a Torino, era molto più difficile da stabilire che a Roma o a Napoli o a Milano. Ma in pratica, la sola conclusione che ne traevano era che bisognava stare molto più attenti, moltiplicare le cautele, i riguardi, e al bisogno – per quanto a denti stretti – gli inchini: perché, a Torino, ‘non si poteva mai dire’. (DD, p. 66)

[Actually, his superiors had no idea what those ‘circles’ were, though they attributed to him a great knowledge of them. They knew – vaguely – that the difference between those who counted and those who didn’t was much harder to establish in Turin than in Rome or Naples or Milan. But, in practice, the only conclusion they drew was that you had to be much more careful, multiply precautions, respect, and when necessary – though with gritted teeth – bowing and scraping: because, in Turin, ‘you never can tell’.] (SW, pp. 53–54)

Santamaria’s superiors share the idea that social relations within Turinese society are regulated by an unwritten code of conduct, something which seemingly does not apply to any other Italian city, and that therefore in Turin it takes extra caution and diplomacy to navigate the pitfalls of social life.

Massimo Campi is, at first, one of the primary suspects in the murder investigation, alongside his friend Anna Carla Dosio, an upper-class, sophisticated lady who entertains a brief, sentimental relationship with Santamaria. Through his lifestyle and personality the figure of Massimo Campi perfectly embodies the aristocratic aloofness that surrounds the city of Turin. A young dandy who belongs to one of the most influential families from the city’s aristocratic milieu, Massimo believes that Turin is a dangerously masked city, deceitful in its provinciality and seemingly detached understatement. In his view, Turin is to blame for spreading a number of ‘plagues’ – that is, historical events and ephemeral trends that have originated in the city – to the rest of the country: he mentions the first automobile, the first unions, films, left-wing intellectuals and sociologists and the process of Italy’s unification. Similarly, Massimo’s apparent affability conceals a haughty sense of superiority and a condescending attitude which stem from his privileged social position. He is deceptive, just like the city of Turin. Santamaria cannot help but observe that he has a certain aura to him which resembles the aura of the city itself. To the attentive observer, he contends, the city and its inhabitants reveal an unexpectedly charming side or, as he puts it, ‘lo charme d’impossibile definizione che stava sotto la crosta scontrosa della città, e che ogni tanto emergeva, irresistibile perché inaspettato’ [that charm, impossible to define, which lay beneath the crusty surface of the city, which emerged every now and then, irresistible because unexpected] (DD, p. 167; SW, p. 139). The use of a foreign term to capture this idea is here a clue to an inherent quality of strangeness and impenetrability in the city.

La donna della domenica documents a changing urban landscape in which traditional socio-geographical boundaries are being redrawn as a consequence of industrialization and internal migration. Urban transformation is particularly evident in the areas of intensive apartment buildings for the lower-middle-classes, such as the Santa Rita neighbourhood, where the character of Oreste Regis lives. Regis works as a civil servant and has been an accomplice to Garrone’s plan to blackmail an aristocratic widow, Ines Tabusso, something to which this chapter will return later. Regis is described as one of those people ‘nati senza avvenire, per far numero, per figurare in statistiche di epidemie influenzali, di consumi, di trascurabili oscillazioni elettorali’ [born without a future, just to take up space, to figure in the statistics of influenza epidemics, of consumption of goods, of electoral trends] (DD, p. 458; SW, p. 379). He is a petit-bourgeois clerk and lives in a neighbourhood that mirrors the monotony of his existence in the uniformity of the modern apartment blocks that have been set down in a rigid grid, a specular reciprocity that calls up ‘the uncanny effects of all mirroring’.⁵³ Santamaria meets Regis in his Santa Rita apartment, pretending to be the spokesman for a local group for the protection of urban green spaces and with the actual intent of interrogating him to elicit a confession. Regis is only waiting to complain about the recent construction frenzy that, in his view, has undermined the liveability of the neighbourhood. As he puts it:

Qui, comunque, siamo arrivati al punto di rottura, non è più ammissibile che questi mostruosi casermoni soffochino ogni possibilità di una vita sana, bella, armoniosa! Lei ha visto: questa non è più una via, è un tunnel, è un cunicolo. (DD, p. 457)

[Here, in any event, we’ve reached the breaking-point. It simply is not conceivable that these monstrous barracks should be allowed to stifle every possibility of beautiful, harmonious, healthy living! You can see yourself. This isn’t a street anymore. It’s a tunnel, an alley.] (SW, p. 377)

The monstrous, uncannily anthropomorphized barracks convey a sense of claustrophobia and suffocation as they loom over what is not a proper street anymore but a tunnel and a straight line. Their repetition is a figure of the uncanny. These buildings produce a specific form of spatial anxiety. They provide another example of how the built environment may foster uncanny experiences. They also point once again to rapid changes that challenge the conventional experience of urban spaces.

Likewise, in the following extract the emphasis on the geometry of functional architectures (implacable rows of buildings, minuscule trapezoidal terraces) suggests shapes inimical and unaccommodating to the human form:

[Regis] si sbracciava in ogni direzione, estendendo l’anatema a tutto il quartiere, di cui s’intravedevano all’ingiro i blocchi scaglionati in file implacabili. Sporgendo la testa, il commissario scorse sulla sinistra, così vicino che quasi lo poteva toccare, un minuscolo terrazzo trapezoidale messo di sghimbescio in una rientranza della facciata: sopra ci stavano a stento una sedia pieghevole e un tavolino di giunco. (DD, p. 457)

[He waved his arms in every direction, extending his anathema to the whole neighbourhood, whose great blocks could be seen all lined up in implacable rows. Sticking out his head, the Inspector glimpsed, to the left, so close he could almost touch it, a minuscule trapezoidal terrace set obliquely in an indentation of the façade: it could just contain a camp chair and a little wicker table.] (SW, pp. 377–78)

With its practical, utilitarian focus, this rational plan to shape the use of space and tackle demographic growth means that all the available space has been densely built up. Freedom of movement and the possibility of connecting with nature are compromised. One perceives, in Vidler’s words, the ‘haunting absence’ of cities of the past.⁵⁴ The latter evoke the idea of a type of urban environment that facilitates socializing through pedestrian-friendly streets and squares. One may argue that the attraction to this traditional model is particularly strong in Italian culture, for the Renaissance city still works as a prototype of proportion and harmony, often in opposition to post-Second World War ‘free-market orientated’ cities.⁵⁵ Modernism, the leading movement in twentieth-century architecture and design, destabilized the principles of tradition and preservation of memory that had been at the heart of urbanism from at least the Renaissance onwards, promoting cities in which new momunemts, such as the skyscraper, embodied the value of functionality at the heart of modern life.⁵⁶ In the above passage, Regis also laments the loss of a closer, more harmonious connection with the natural environment.

Fruttero & Lucentini’s depiction of Turin’s old centre apparently celebrates the benign aura of authenticity of the older part of the city. On a closer look, however, it contains references to elements of ‘disorder’ as Massimo’s walk in the old centre reveals unexpected insights into the transformation of this part of the city. There emerges once again a mismatch between preconceptions and the actual experience of the city. The latter is fraught with baffling and disorienting feelings:

[Massimo] se ne andò, tutto felice, fra le ghiotte bottegucce dove non aveva messo mai piede […]. Tutto gli si ricostruiva soavemente intorno: droghieri in camice grigio, garzoni in grembiule bianco arrotolato alla vita, donnone con la sporta, suore bisbiglianti, striminzite beghine, pensionati col mezzo sigaro, mamme che gridavano dagli ammezzati. A ogni cantonata sostava una prostituta grassa. Non era ‘proletariato’, questo, era ancora ‘popolino’, e Massimo, crogiolandosi nel suo sdoppiamento, vi si aggirava come in una festa in costume una volta tanto riuscita, insensibile ai fumi d’auto e motociclette, ai juke-box e ai dialetti meridionali che (il maestro di cerimonia non poteva aver pensato proprio a tutto!) sgorbiavano ogni tanto la composizione. (DD, p. 228)

[He went off, completely happy, among the seductive shops where he had never set foot […]. Everything fell gently into place around him: grocers in white smocks, butcher-boys with aprons hitched up at their waists, housewives with shopping bags, murmuring nuns, withered church-mice, old men smoking half-cigars, Mammas yelling from balconies. At every corner a fat prostitute was stationed. This wasn’t the ‘proletariat’: this was still the ‘populace’, and Massimo, reveling in his split personality, wandered as through a costume ball that had, for once, succeeded, insensitive to the fumes from cars and motorcycles, to the jukeboxes and the Southern dialects that (the master of ceremony couldn’t think of every little thing!) occasionally marred the composition.] (SW, p. 188)

The pre-industrial scene that looks to Massimo like a costume ball staging the traditional figures of the ‘populace’ (artisans, grocers, women yelling at their children from balconies, prostitutes waiting for customers) turns out to be a simulacrum in a sort of slippage between reality and dream, as the old centre is changing as rapidly as the rest of the city. Massimo blames himself for having indulged in regret for the old days and in the sentimental celebration of an urban social order that probably never existed. The clues to new lifestyles and ways of mobility (the fumes from cars and motorcycles), cultural and leisure habits (the jukeboxes) and the ‘jarring’ presence of Southern immigrants all point to a defamiliarizing experience in which conventional and familiar categories are called into question. Furthermore, what Massimo sees appears messily human in form. The juxtaposition of different elements in Fruttero & Lucentini’s description produce a montage-like effect, which is, according to Fisher, the clearest embodiment of the weird.⁵⁷

In the extract quoted above, the act of walking enables one to see beyond superficial appearances, very much like the process of detecting. One may take this argument further and track an analogy between crime fiction and psycho-geographical enquiry, which both rely heavily on walking. To begin with, they share the same object of analysis, that is, a city that has become more complex and enigmatic. The term psycho-geography, coined in 1950s Paris by the Situationist movement of Guy Debord, envisaged a set of theories and practices that were aimed at challenging traditional, established ways of moving around the city by promoting a playful urban experience.⁵⁸ Specifically, the Situationists encouraged a creative remapping of urban space through aimless drifting (the so-called dérive) and the practice of automatic writing in the lines of the Surrealist tradition, thereby accessing a more authentic experience of the city.⁵⁹ The communal search for alternative ways of apprehending and representing urban reality may explain why the act of walking features prominently in both psycho-geography and classical detective stories. Benjamin points out that both the flâneur and the detective record observations of urban scenes and grasp traces and hints disseminated across the urban fabric.⁶⁰ As Benjamin puts it, ‘the joy of watching’ makes of the flâneur an ‘amateur detective’.⁶¹ As shown in Bianciardi’s La vita agra, walking may become an expression of non-conformism and even outright protest.

Roadworks are a further point of connection between La vita agra and La donna della domenica. Fruttero & Lucentini deem the frenzy of repair deafening and ubiquitous, hinting at Turin’s relentless urban restructuring in those years. The improvement works, with their corollary of acoustic pollution and dust clouds, burden the characters in La donna della domenica with a sense of oppression and almost physical fatigue. This is particularly the case for those who have grown up elsewhere and have moved to Turin later in life, like Santamaria and other fellow police officers who are also originally from the South. The sensation of physical and mental effort conveyed by the seemingly ever-present roadworks suggests once again a loss of control over the rapidly changing urban landscape. Urban transformations are so central to the story in La donna della domenica that they may be seen as a trigger for the murder of the architect Garrone.⁶² Having learnt about Tabusso’s plan to turn her lawn into building plots and being aware of a building restriction that could block her application, Garrone begins to blackmail her. He demands that she choose his own building project over the official one, which has been drawn up by a distinguished architectural firm. Tabusso, who is described as a ‘vecchia torinese con l’acqua alla gola, sopraffatta da nuove genti, nuovi costumi, nuove leggi, nuovi vizi’ [old Turinese lady with her back to the wall, bullied by new people, new customs, new laws, new vices] (DD, p. 502; SW, p. 415), somehow persuades herself that the only way out of her predicament is to kill Garrone. Manai has observed that the figure of Tabusso exemplifies the tension between Turin’s past and present, or between old and new money: on the one hand the aristocracy and on the other the middle- and upper-class business people who are becoming the new predominant actors on the Turinese scene.⁶³

As noted earlier, modern crime fiction calls into question a unitary and absolute knowledge of the city by proposing an alternative perspective based on the shared viewpoint of the characters. The interacting points of view of characters who, in La donna della domenica, are representatives of different urban social groups create a dynamic sketch of Turin’s evolving social geography. Similarly, Fruttero & Lucentini’s subsequent novel A che punto è la notte stages a choral ensemble of characters who perform different functions and are based in various areas of the city. It still features Inspector Santamaria as the detective, this time dealing with the assassination of Don Alfonso Pezza, the unusual priest of the Church of Santa Liberata. Don Pezza is surrounded by a group of equally shady individuals, such as the Fiat engineer Vicini and the retired Fiat worker Priotti. Don Pezza’s murder triggers a series of events that connect even more characters together, including Monguzzi and Rossignolo (who work in a publishing house and are arguably a caricature of Fruttero and Lucentini themselves); Thea Guidi and her mother, who belong to a wealthy Turinese family; and the Mafia associate Graziano Scalisi. Fruttero & Lucentini’s second Turinese crime novel was published in 1979, a period of economic recession and socio-political turmoil in Italy, which may account for the crepuscular atmosphere of the story, alluded to in the title and in the recurring references to corrupted Babylon.⁶⁴

In A che punto è la notte, the narrative focus moves significantly to suburban Turin and the municipalities of the urban belt. The story has the same trajectory. The novel is framed by Turin’s modern peripheries: it begins with the description of the Brussone housing project developed in the hinterland during the 1960s, while the final police chase takes place in a disused industrial area awaiting redevelopment, still in the outer city. The emphasis on the precariousness of the housing projects and urban interventions that were carried out only a decade before and the general sense of incompleteness and urban decay bear witness to Turin’s abrupt development in the aftermath of the boom. The spread of a ‘burgeoning periphery’ was the result of the rapid rise in population following the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, which ‘put pressure on Turin’s infrastructure’.⁶⁵ Graziano’s and Thea’s car journey offers a pretext for Fruttero and Lucentini to take the reader on a tour through the urban belt, where neon-lit, semi-abandoned furniture workshops, run-down motels and shabby night clubs remind us once again that ‘the uncanny erupt[s]‌ in empty parking lots around abandoned or run-down shopping malls, in […] the wasted margins and surface appearances of postindustrial culture’:⁶⁶

La Porsche correva tra gli innumerevoli misteri della periferia. Alti edifici nudi, resi più simili gli uni agli altri da differenze irrisorie, bordavano lunghi viali senza fine, ormai identici in tutte le città del mondo. […] una vittoria dell’anonimo, del piatto e uniforme plurale. (PN, p. 100)

[The Porsche went fast across the many mysteries of the periphery. Bare, tall buildings, made more similar to each other by negligible differences, bordered long endless avenues, now identical in every city in the world. […] a victory of the anonymous, of the flat and uniform plural.]

In their replicability, the anonymous buildings embody the figure of the double with its effect of disorientation. These modern developments are almost interchangeable and replaceable. The impersonality of buildings and peripheral urban areas here hint at the levelling effect of economic growth and rapid urbanization that have sacrificed distinctive local features. The same, Fruttero & Lucentini contend, applies to every city in an increasingly globalized world. As national economies grow more interconnected after the end of the Second World War, and mass tourism became an established reality, the geography of global capitalism has tended to flatten out spatial differences: what Fruttero and Lucentini describe as a victory for uniformity.

The post-industrial landscape of suburban Turin is a disorderly juxtaposition of various architectural and industrial remnants from different epochs. Again, like in a sort of montage, the new stands next to the old, the elegant next to the shabby. What Fruttero & Lucentini describe as ‘horizontal archaeology’ conveys the apparent loss of coherence and legibility of the urban landscape:

Tra i compatti spicchi delle abitazioni cominciavano ad apparire basse cancellate e tetti aguzzi di fabbriche e manifatture, e ogni tanto un rettangolo d’erba marrone nel quale becchettava il collo smisurato e schematico di una gru. La città si dilatava, ricoprendo i vecchi confini coi paesi della cintura, e ciò che restava era una specie di archeologia orizzontale, gli strati uno accanto all’altro, ben riconoscibili, la diroccata cascina barocca, poi la stazione Esso, poi la ciminiera ottocentesca, poi la casa operaia dei primi del secolo, poi la villetta 1920 col giardino e i pesci rossi, poi di nuovo una cascina, una stazione Chevron, un casello daziario abbandonato, e così via in cerchi sempre più ampi. (PN, p. 101)

[Between the compact segments of the houses, the low gates and pointed roofs of factories and manufactures began to appear and every now and then a rectangle of brown grass being pecked at by the huge and angular neck of a crane. The city expanded, covering the old borders with the villages of the belt; and what remained was a kind of horizontal archaeology, the layers next to each other, easily recognizable, the ruined Baroque farmhouse, then the Esso station, then the nineteenth-century chimney, then the workers’ house from the beginning of the century, then the cottage from 1920 with the garden and goldfish, then again a farmhouse, a Chevron station, an abandoned customs’ toll booth – and so on in ever widening circles.]

The landscape appears unevenly cluttered with traces of previous industrial endeavours. The description conveys the sense that rapid, haphazard urbanization has turned what was once countryside into an ugly, inhospitable place, the almost complete absence of vegetation (a few faded blades of bleached grass are all that remains) emphasizing this negative impact. The desolate, unkempt landscape conveys feelings of neglect and lack of care. Worries about the changing relationship to the natural environment bear witness to the fact that post-war development privileged growth over the preservation of the historic patrimony and environment; and took place in a country, Italy, deeply concerned with its past and traditions and generally reluctant to implement innovation. A country, to put it in Volponi’s words, ‘altalenante e sfuggente, scrimine tra sviluppo e ritardo’ [oscillating and elusive, suspended between development and delay] (MC, p. 186). Paul Ginsborg points out that between 1957 and 1964 the number of new houses being built in Italy increased enormously, and often haphazardly, with the conservation of green areas frequently overlooked in the planning process.⁶⁷ Building speculation also played a central role in unregulated urban sprawl at the expense of the countryside.⁶⁸ It is also interesting to note how the gendered element of the language (‘la città si dilatava’) in the extract, like the example discussed above in relation to Scerbanenco, denounces anxiety about unregulated urban sprawl. As in the Lamberti novels, it betrays a male-biased conception of the expansion and fluidity of urban spaces, which challenge a sense of (masculine) rational order and mastery.

Dangerous City

As the city expands and becomes more complex, it also becomes less controllable. Urbanization and domestic immigration bring about the fear of penetration by criminals. The correlation between crime rates and the size of the city where these are recorded has been the focus of a number of sociological studies.⁶⁹ Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote identify three main peculiarities of the big city that may explain why the incidence of crime is higher in dense urban areas: these enjoy greater access to economic resources and therefore higher pecuniary returns, a lower probability of arrest and the presence of a higher number of crime-prone individuals.⁷⁰ Italian cities are no exception and the connection between urbanization and crime provides a fertile ground for detective stories. Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini show that crime follows the geography of industrialization by proliferating in the newly urbanized areas of Milan and Turin and by taking advantage of the improved road and motorway networks. The stretching out of Milan and Turin to absorb adjacent settlements also means more interstitial spaces where illegal activities may take place. At the same time, as cities are increasingly interconnected in the geography of global capitalism, criminal groups find new international markets.

The remainder of this chapter is dedicated to a more detailed discussion of the geography of crime in the examined novels. Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini address the connection between urban development and evolution of criminality not only in terms of how the latter concretely mirrors the growth of the city, but also at a more subtle level. On the one hand, criminal organizations show the efficiency of modern industry; on the other, criminal acts are often engendered by the frustrated aspirations of the characters who are not able to succeed in the competitive environment of the big city and are therefore more likely to be lured into illegal rackets. As John Foot observes, this is particularly the case for ‘those who arrived in the cities during the boom in search of work – for whom exclusion, not integration, was often the dominant experience’.⁷¹

Urbanization and Crime

When in Venere privata Alberta Radelli is found dead in Metanopoli, her wrists cut so as to disguise the murder as suicide, Duca observes that ‘oggi ci si svena nei nuovi centri del petrolio, dell’industria pesante, schiavi in fondo, anche in questo ultimo atto di volontà, della spietata marcia verso il futuro’ [nowadays one cuts one’s wrists in the new centres of oil, of heavy industry, fundamentally slaves, even in this last act of will, to the ruthless march towards the future] (VP, p. 75). Metanopoli was created between 1955 and 1960 in San Donato Milanese, in the suburbs of Milan, by Enrico Mattei, founder of the multinational oil company Eni,⁷² as a complex of offices, factory buildings and blocks of flats for factory workers; it was to represent an ideal model of the modern industrial town, providing housing and other amenities for Eni employees.⁷³ It is, therefore, emblematic that Alberta Radelli finds her death here, close to the industrial complex which is a famous example of the entrepreneurial spirit of the boom years. To Duca it goes to show the social deracination produced by the widespread culture of profit, as if Alberta has here relinquished her own will to this new idol.

Crime draws on the opportunities opened up by economic growth and develops around the new centres of power. Inspector Santamaria, however, cautions against taking too simplistic a view of the new metropolitan criminality and compares the belief that in recent years a generation of ruthless criminals has replaced a more dignified, respectable malavita [criminal underworld] to certain unrealistic reveries of the past in which memories are transfigured and sensory perceptions become more intense:

I criminali – pareva a lui – erano sempre stati violenti e sempre ‘nuovi’, cioè un passo più avanti della polizia. […] Rimpiangere la malavita ‘di una volta’ era un po’ come rimpiangere il gusto delle albicocche dell’infanzia o le estati interminabilmente serene di un passato meteorologico immaginario. (PN, p. 116)

[Criminals – it seemed to him – had always been violent and always ‘new’, that is, always one step ahead of the police. [...] Regretting the ‘once-upon-a-time’ underworld was a bit like regretting the taste of childhood apricots or the endlessly serene summers of an imaginary meteorological past.]

While it would clearly overstate the case to suggest that crime undergoes a sort of anthropological mutation in those years, it is undeniable that the new socio-economic circumstances of post-war Italy effect a certain evolution of crime. Marco Paoli identifies a number of elements that concur to shape new forms of criminality in post-war Italian society, such as the involvement of the Mafia in the North of the country, the shift away from traditional values that causes a widespread lack of orientation and the political mistrust that accounts for the social unrest and violence of the Years of Lead.⁷⁴ The texts examined here, and especially the Lamberti novels, offer an insight into organized criminal activities that may be considered modern in terms of their organizational methods and transnational scale. They show the international ramifications of crime due to the increasing interconnectedness of Western societies after the Second World War. As for Fruttero & Lucentini, it may be argued that while La donna della domenica encompasses many of the stylistic features of the traditional giallo, such as the enclosed space of the murder and the detective’s psychological enquiry, undertaken within the well-defined circles of a conservative urban society, A che punto è la notte features a more complex criminal organization with transboundary interests. The criminal plan around which the story revolves betrays in-depth business knowledge. Over the course of the novel, it emerges that Fiat executive Musumanno is indeed the mastermind of the criminal scheme. Generally speaking, however, the international dimension of crime pertains more to Scerbanenco’s fiction, which reflects the reputation as a global industrial centre that Milan achieved in the 1960s. Despite the fact that Turin’s population grew exponentially in the post-war years, exceeding one million inhabitants,⁷⁵ in Fruttero & Lucentini’s view the city has never risen above its small-town mentality. ‘Il vecchio nucleo provinciale di Torino’ [the old, provincial core of Turin] (DD, p. 168; SW, p. 140], as Santamaria puts it, stubbornly resists change.

Scerbanenco’s Traditori di tutti and Fruttero & Lucentini’s A che punto è la notte are especially illustrative of the urban tendency towards crime, for they show most clearly that urban growth fosters the development of criminal activities. In Traditori di tutti a series of connected murders occur along the strade provinciali [provincial roads] and navigli [canals] that connect Milan to the municipalities of the hinterland, Buccinasco, Banco Romano and Ca’ Torino. Susanna Paganica kills Turiddu Sompani and Adele Terrini by pushing the car in which they lie asleep into the waters of the Alzaia Naviglio Pavese at the point of intersection between a country road ‘ancora commoventemente campagnola’ [old, unsurfaced towpath] (TT, pp. 8–9; DM, p. 8) and a more recently developed strada statale [state highway] heading to Milan.⁷⁶ Susanna has chosen the spot carefully, taking into account the less frequented, peripheral location but also the proximity of the road links that enable her to hitch-hike a ride and organize her escape after the murder. A similar fate awaits Giovanna Marelli and Silvano Solvere, whose car plunges fatally into the water of the Naviglio Grande, near Ronchetto sul Naviglio, while they desperately attempt to escape from a shootout. The novel’s primary focus on the suburbs is symptomatic of the expansion of Milan from the centre outwards. The arms-trafficking investigated by Duca relies on a system of meeting places and delivery and collection points which are again mainly located in the suburbs. Examples of these criminal hubs are the Trattoria Binaschina, a restaurant that provides a front for illegal activities and is situated along a country road outside Milan, and Ulrico Brambilla’s butcher’s shops, which are the transit points for the smuggling of illegal arms. The chain of butcher’s shops has recently opened new branches in Banco Romano and Ca’ Torino, expanding from the city centre to the suburbs. The criminal organization trading arms is based in Milan but has branches in Genoa, France and the Alto Adige region, where the weapons are distributed to local terrorists.

In A che punto è la notte, we learn that a group of mafiosi have been relocated to the suburbs of Turin from the South of the country, following a court order known as a soggiorno obbligato. This was a Fascist policy reintroduced in 1956 which prescribed the forced resettlement within the national territory of criminals affiliated with a Mafia group. The policy had the twofold purpose of cutting the criminals’ ties with their places of origin and of keeping them under law enforcement.⁷⁷ In this sense, the development of crime follows patterns of modernization not only within the city but also on a national scale, since one may assume that the decision to relocate these serious offenders to the cities of the North betrays a perception of Northern Italy as the virtuous, productive half of the country. In other words, it expresses the idea that such an environment may exert a positive influence on these individuals’ deviant tendencies as well as cutting off their links with organized crime in the South.⁷⁸ Such a measure was not without problems and controversy. A common argument, especially among those whose agenda involves blaming the South for the problems of the country, has been that the soggiorno obbligato ultimately accelerated the Mafia’s infiltration in the North, enabling them to re-build a network for their activities. Nevertheless, research has shown that Mafia transplantion may be due more broadly to the emigration of people from territories where mafias are widespread. No entrenchment or direct correlation exists with the soggiorno policy.⁷⁹ It is also interesting to note that the social geography of cities like Turin and Milan tended to reproduce national imbalances. Mary Louise Lobsinger observes that the polarity between affluent central areas and more deprived suburban areas mirrored the uneven growth at the national level.⁸⁰ If it is true that crime follows the geography of industrialization, the same may be said about de-industrialization in A che punto è la notte. The final pages of the novel are set in an abandoned foundry that once belonged to Fiat and has been left unused following a series of corporate spin-offs (PN, p. 566). The crime group has set up its headquarters here in order to carry out its money-laundering plan without arousing attention. In a way that evokes other descriptions of neglected, cluttered urban environments which we find elsewhere in the book, the foundry is surrounded by ‘tetti di fabbriche, capannoni, piccole officine, depositi, silos di cemento, sparsi villini, lontani falansteri, gobbe di tennis coperti, come balene arenate’ [factory roofs, warehouses, small workshops, depositories, cement silos, scattered cottages, distant phalanstères and the swollen domes of covered tennis courts, like beached whales] (PN, p. 507).

Scerbanenco’s Venere privata explores the issue of organized and irregular prostitution in the city of Milan. In the novel, prostitution takes place in central as well as outer areas of the city, showing how ‘the absence of any definable red-light district in the city [of Milan] makes the whole urban area available for trade’.⁸¹ Venere privata tells the story of two young women, Alberta and Livia, who have been experimenting with occasional prostitution, partly out of a material need to earn extra money and partly for purposes of sociological research (Livia is indeed a former student of sociology). One day Alberta is approached by an elegant old man who persuades her to follow him to a photography studio to have some nude photographs taken. The man turns out to be a member of an international network dedicated to exploiting young women and the decision to follow him costs Alberta her life. Duca’s plan to find the man who has approached and murdered Alberta involves using her friend Livia as bait: she will walk with affected nonchalance, like ‘una signorina che cerca qualcuno o qualche cosa, un negozio, o che aspetta l’ora di un appuntamento’ [a young lady looking for someone or something, a shop perhaps, or waiting for an appointment] (VP, p. 160), in the areas between the Piazza della Scala, Piazza San Babila and Piazza San Carlo, waiting for the man to make an appearance. As is also shown by the following example, the streets and landmarks of Milan feature prominently in the novel in connection with the theme of prostitution. In other words, through the issue of prostitution Scerbanenco gives prominence to the topography of Milan:

In quel tratto di viale che dall’Arco del Sempione mira al Castello Sforzesco, anche appena passate le dieci del mattino, vi sono sul bordo dello stradone accattivanti figure femminili […] che sanno di operare in una grande metropoli dove non vi sono provinciali limiti di orario o conformistiche divisioni tra notte e giorno. (VP, p. 58)

[In that stretch of avenue which leads from the Arco del Sempione to the Castello Sforzesco, even after ten in the morning, there are captivating female figures on the edge of the road [...] who know they work in a large metropolis where they are not subject to provincial notions of time or traditional divisions between night and day.]

No matter what time of day or night, in the big city there are always people around and therefore potential clients. The relevance of the topic of prostitution in novels such as Venere privata and (as mentioned earlier) in La donna della domenica may to some extent be a reflection of the debate sparked in Italian society by the Merlin Law of 1958, which was the result of the ten-year battle fought by Senator Lina Merlin against the exploitation of prostitutes.⁸² When the bill was finally approved after ten years of political negotiation, it appeared to be a heavily revised version of Merlin’s original proposal, which was to maintain the legality of prostitution and offer assistance and provision to former prostitutes, while reinforcing the punitive measures against their customers. The final version of the new legislation failed to recognize and guarantee the basic rights of prostitutes.⁸³

Clues to the evolution of metropolitan criminality may also be found in the new connotations acquired by specific urban places in the post-war period. One example, also seen in Chapter 1, is Milan’s Stazione Centrale. ‘A place of exchange and the settling of accounts’,⁸⁴ as Foot puts it, the station provides, for example, the main transit point for an illegal trade in diamonds in Scerbanenco’s short story ‘Stazione centrale ammazzare subito’. The members of the criminal organization meet and exchange the diamonds at the Stazione Centrale before blending into the crowds of people arriving into or leaving the station. Milan’s tangenziale or circonvallazione [ring road] is another place that features prominently in crime stories set in the Northern capital: a trend that once again follows the example of Scerbanenco.⁸⁵ As Giuliana Pieri points out, the ring road separates ‘both physically and metaphorically’ Milan city centre from outer areas and acts as a gateway that allows the action to move into and out of these boundaries, thereby covering the territory of the whole city.⁸⁶ The fact that, more generally, Scerbanenco’s novels contain frequent references to the modern road network bears witness to the major road improvements and sharp increase in mobility of the post-war years. In Venere privata Alberta and Davide travel at high speed on the Autostrada del Sole, the motorway linking Milan and Naples that was inaugurated in 1964, since they have decided on a whim to have lunch in Florence and arrive back in Milan in time for the aperitivo, embracing the hedonism of the boom years. Elsewhere, criminals use thoroughfares and motorways to escape the authorities who are tracking them. In the short story ‘Basta col cianuro’ [Enough of Cyanide], a smuggler is arrested by the police on a motorway as he flees from the criminal organization that is chasing him. In ‘Piccolo Hôtel per sadici’ [A Small Hotel for Sadists], two killers attempt a similar escape, driving from Milan to Rome.⁸⁷

When discussing the link between urbanization and crime, one should also take into account the social and anthropological implications of Italy’s post-war economic growth. In this chapter we have seen textual examples of crimes that are engendered by certain kinds of obstacle that prevent the characters from achieving their goals and aspirations. Post-war economic development emphasized individual initiative and achievement, championing an idea of success as the attainment of money and social and professional recognition. In the novels examined in this chapter the predominance of this individualistic culture transpires through characters who resort to illegal means to achieve their ends since they are unable to gain access to material goods legitimately. As Burns observes, in Scerbanenco’s Milan ‘everyone aspires to move ahead and upwards’.⁸⁸ The Lamberti novels show that the opportunities offered by modern urban life are not within everyone’s reach and that frustrated desires and aspirations may develop into crime. Criminal acts are, indeed, often committed by underprivileged people who aim to afford the material lifestyle and luxury goods available in the city. Prostitution is a clear example of this: in Scerbanenco’s crime stories women are either forced into the sex trade by a man whom they trust or they decide to become prostitutes out of financial difficulties that would make it impossible for them to live in an expensive city like Milan. In other instances, characters turned criminal may already enjoy a comfortable lifestyle and yet aspire to greater wealth and professional and social prestige, as shown by the criminal plot at the very top of the industrial world in A che punto è la notte.

A further way in which crime evolves lies in its ability to share some of the organizational methods of modern industry. When the criminal organization of Venere privata moves its activities from the city centre to the suburbs of Milan in order to attract less attention, Duca observes that ‘si sono decentrati anche loro, come le grandi fabbriche’ [they, too, have been decentralized, like large factories] (VP, p. 178). He is suggesting that the crime syndicate has adopted the principles of modern business management, particularly its strategy of delocalization. Duca also notes that the crime group is organized ‘esattamente come un ufficio importazione-esportazione’ [exactly like an import-export office] (VP, p. 169). Similarly, the illegal trade in ‘Stazione centrale ammazzare subito’ is reminiscent of the Fiat production lines in its methodical organization and operational efficiency.⁸⁹ Criminal and capitalist worlds come symbolically to coincide in the scene of Vicini’s murder in A che punto è la notte. As mentioned above, at least two Fiat executives, Musumanno and Vicini himself, are implicated in the financial fraud which Santamaria unravels. The following passage, which describes the scene of the murder, explicitly compares criminal and industrial systems through the image of the gun that is found next to Vicini’s body in the basement of the Fiat headquarters in Turin:

L’arma, una Beretta cal. 9 corto, dopo i rilievi era stata provvisoriamente posata su uno stretto tavolo bianco, fra un telefono e gli altri oggetti tolti dalle tasche del morto. Nera, metallica, funzionale, non contrastava affatto col paesaggio asettico del centro elaboratori, occupava anche lei il suo esatto spazio aziendale. (PN, p. 487)

[After forensic evalutation the weapon, a Beretta cal. 9 short, had been provisionally placed on a narrow white table, between a telephone and the other objects removed from the dead man’s pockets. Black, metallic, functional, it did not contrast at all with the aseptic landscape of the computer centre; it, too, occupied its proper place in the company setting.]

The gun that has just fired the fatal shot has its own legitimate place in the business setting, for it shares with it the same parameters of efficiency and cold, tactical precision.

So far the role of the periphery in the link between urbanization and violent crime has only been hinted at. What follows will look in more detail at the representation of suburban areas in our novels, scrutiny which generally confirms their shared image of bleak and dangerous areas. In so doing, it will refer closely to Foot’s study of the modern periphery. While Foot focuses on the case of Milan, his deliberations may be extended to other Italian cities, for the negative reputation of outer urban areas is a nationwide phenomenon.⁹⁰ Foot shows that these stereotypes rely on a static view of the urban environment. Intriguingly, the periphery holds a special place in the imagery evoked by the uncanny and eerie, for it is perceived as Other.

Periphery

As seen above, A che punto è la notte gives special prominence to suburban Turin. The novel opens with the description of the Brussone residential neighbourhood developed during the 1960s, presenting it in terms of architectural failure:

Vent’anni prima, dopo molti viaggi-studio nei paesi scandinavi e in Inghilterra, un gruppo di architetti e urbanisti aveva deciso di costruire all’estrema periferia di Torino un quartiere modello, dove due o tremila cittadini fra i meno abbienti potessero vivere, per una somma alla portata dei loro guadagni, in mezzo alla natura. Per questo esperimento era stata prescelta la zona di una vecchia cascina (subito demolita) denominata ‘Il Brussone’, e su quei campi e prati e orti tra la Dora e la Stura erano sorte case ‘a misura d’uomo’, ossia a tre piani, di mattoni e calcestruzzo a vista, senza ascensori e con terrazzetti chiusi da alte grate di cemento, dietro le quali gli inquilini avrebbero dovuto stendere ad asciugare la biancheria, come facevano i loro omologhi flagellati dai venti artici. (PN, pp. 7–8)

[Twenty years earlier, after many study trips to Scandinavian countries and to England, a group of architects and urban planners had decided to build a model neighbourhood on the outskirts of Turin where two or three thousand from amongst the poorest citizens could live, for a sum within the range of their earnings, in the midst of nature. For this experiment the area of an old farmhouse (immediately demolished) called ‘Il Brussone’ was chosen and on those fields and meadows and vegetable gardens between the Dora and the Stura rivers were built houses ‘on a human scale’, i.e., three storeys, brick and exposed concrete, without lifts and with terraces closed by high concrete grates, behind which the tenants would have to hang their laundry out to dry, just like their northern counterparts scourged by Arctic winds.]

The neighbourhood of Brussone incorporates Modernist ideals of simplified, purpose-oriented architectural forms. It takes inspiration from a Northern European model of minimality and efficiency that does not fit into the landscape of Turin’s urban belt: the result is a striking mismatch and a failed attempt to embody an ideal of modern living intended to meet the needs of those residents who have limited economic means. Its current state of neglect and decay betrays the many shortcomings of the project. We read, for instance, that ‘ciuffi d’erba giallastra, calve radure, informi gibbosità e tumuli di aiuole sconfitte’ [tufts of yellowing grass, razed clearings, shapeless mounds and the tumuli of conquered flower beds] are all that remains of the blooming meadows imagined by the urban planners (PN, p. 8). Objections to functionalism in architecture often point precisely to the need to build ‘contextually’, that is, to take into account historical and local contexts.⁹¹

Fruttero & Lucentini’s portrayal of the Brussone neighbourhood is also interesting from the perspective of the alleged lack of history of the periphery. It dwells on the Brussone street toponymy, repeating like a refrain that ‘in via dei Rododendri non c’era nessun rododendro. […] nel viale degli Ontani non c’era nessun ontano, come non c’era nessun ranuncolo in via dei Ranuncoli’ [in the Via dei Rododendri there was no rhododendron. [...] in the Viale degli Altani there was no alder, just as there was no buttercup in the Via dei Ranuncoli] (PN, pp. 7–8). On the one hand, Fruttero & Lucentini here suggest that the project feels contrived, for the street names that evoke the soothing presence of flowers belong to a desolate concrete landscape. On the other, they hint at the memorability of places. De Certeau points out that place names which refer to the history of an urban community inspire feelings of identification and attachment, feelings which make those places emotionally relevant and ultimately habitable.⁹² Unlike street names that refer to meaningful historical events or figures who fulfil the role of identity-building,⁹³ the Brussone toponyms sound empty and artificial. Brussone has no character and resembles other, similar places on the urban periphery: it is replicable, like ‘un pezzo di viale cittadino trapiantato tale e quale a venti chilometri da Torino’ [a piece of city avenue transplanted as it is to a place twenty kilometres from Turin] (PN, p 131), and aseptic, with ‘viali sempre più larghi, aggiornati, indispensabili, come elenchi telefonici, in cui non mancava niente tranne la vitalità di un errore, la suggestione del superfluo’ [ever wider avenues, fully modernized, indispensable, like telephone directories, in which nothing was missing except for the vitality of an error, the suggestion of the superfluous] (PN, p. 418).

Foot argues that such representations of the periphery rely on a dual model which opposes the city centre as the custodian of identity and tradition to outer urban areas, often dismissed as the product of unregulated urban growth.⁹⁴ This view fails to acknowledge that boundaries within the city are constantly redefined and that the periphery is itself fluid: peripheral areas may, for example, come to be perceived as more central and upmarket due to processes of gentrification and the creation of faster road links to the centre.⁹⁵ According to Foot, the abstract dual model of the city is responsible for the idea of the periphery as an ‘anti-city’ or ‘non-city’.⁹⁶ On the one hand, this reputation stems from the supposed lack of history and traditional urban features such as squares and monuments in the modern suburbs. On the other, it draws on the allegedly poor architectural quality and bleakness of modern building developments and denounces the role of building-speculation practices.

These arguments reverberate in Fruttero & Lucentini’s description of Brussone. In the following example the lack of a clear identity of the modern periphery is reflected in the mismatch between modern highways and ring roads and the surviving fields and trails through pasture land nearby:

Fra tutti gli antichi paesi della cintura, la città, scoppiando, aveva piantato le sue schegge, disseminato i suoi brandelli. Sentieri da pascolo in terra battuta correvano accanto a superstrade a quattro corsie, tortuose carreggiate comunali e provinciali si dilatavano in grandi arterie di circonvallazione […]. In quella aggrovigliata trama di snodi e raccordi […] orientarsi era diventato un problema anche di giorno e senza nebbia. (PN, p. 52)

[Among all the ancient towns of the urban belt, the city, bursting, had planted its splinters, scattered its shreds. Dirt paths through pastures ran alongside four-lane motorways, winding municipal and provincial carriageways expanded into large ring roads […]. In that tangled web of junctions and connections [...] orienting oneself had become a problem even during the day and without fog.]

The extract contains several interesting elements. The image of the city spreading out into the countryside is a violent one, described like an explosion that scatters around splinters and shreds. The concrete jungle embodies the out-of-control growth of the city and the resultant feelings of bewilderment and disorientation as the boundaries between city and countryside blur. Foot also identifies architectural disorder as a fundamental trope that has shaped the discourse about the periphery.⁹⁷ Once again, one may find here the idea of the periphery as Other, an uncanny outgrowth of the city that is perceived as incongruous and out of place.

The fear of losing oneself in the city brings to mind Freud’s account of his own experience of losing his way in the unfamiliar Italian town of Genoa. It may be regarded as one of the uncanny experiences par excellence and a further indication of the ways in which the built environment may evoke this peculiar emotion. Freud recounts how he feels increasingly uncomfortable as, while trying to find his way, he keeps inadvertently coming back to the same street in a disreputable part of town where he begins to attract attention.⁹⁸ Repetition is a prominent theme of the uncanny: here, it points again to the return of what had been forgotten and repressed. In La donna della domenica Anna Carla walks along the River Po, suddenly to find herself in an unfamiliar part of Turin. She is deep in thought and does not immediately realize that she has walked farther away than she had intended. Her pensive, uneasy mood as she mulls over the argument she had the night before with her friend Massimo finds a symbolic counterpart in the bleak landscape she soon encounters as she walks out towards the periphery:

Continuò lungo l’argine: a destra aveva le acque basse e grigie del fiume, sorvegliate da lontane figure di pescatori; a sinistra un vasto e accidentato prato con alti mucchi di rifiuti, profilati contro un orizzonte di rigide strutture e neri tralicci che infittivano, in direzione di Chivasso, lungo un’arteria di grande traffico coi lampioni già incongruamente accesi. Lo squallore era calligrafico, perfezionistico, arrivava alla pianta d’acacia solitaria e morente, alla scatoletta di sardine arrugginita tra le ortiche del sentiero. (DD, p. 25)

[She walked on along the bank: to the right was the low, grey water of the river, punctuated by distant forms of fishermen; on her left, a vast and uneven field with high piles of rubbish, standing out against a horizon of stiff structures and black pylons which grew denser towards Chivasso, along a busy highway with its street-lights already incongruously burning. The squalor was over-refined, perfectionist; it included the solitary, dying acacia, the rusting sardine can among the nettles on the path.] (SW, p. 20)

The extract brings to mind similar descriptions of the periphery that may be found in A che punto è la notte (for instance, in the absence of vegetation) and Scerbanenco’s novels (city waste and pollution). These are the undesirable products of urbanization, the underside of economic development that ought to have remained hidden from view and instead come to light: the Freudian return of the repressed. The extract also suggests that familiar urban features gradually fade away as Anna Carla moves out of the city centre. As she looks around, all she can see are a big road clogged with traffic, black pylons and some structures whose purpose is not immediately clear. The only human presence, that of some faraway fishermen, is incongruous and disquieting:

Dall’acqua aveva ora cominciato a salire un’umidità nebbiosa, dal cielo scendeva una cappa d’un giallo sporco e freddo. Non si viene da sole in un posto così, pensò con disagio. Tornò indietro, ma sforzandosi di non correre, per non sentirsi ancora più stupida. (DD, p. 26)

[From the water a misty humidity had begun to rise, from the sky a kind of lid of cold yellow dirty air descended. You don’t come to a place like this alone, she thought uneasily. She turned back, forcing herself not to run, so she wouldn’t feel still more stupid.] (SW, p. 21)

Anna Carla feels unsafe. While the passage should be read through Fruttero and Lucentini’s ironic style, which in this case makes fun of the upper-class lady who feels lost outside her elegant central neighbourhood, it still tells us something about women’s freedom of movement in the city. Anna Carla has crossed an invisible boundary and instinctively rushes back, because this is no place for a woman to go alone. The periphery emerges again as impersonal and soulless, a place where it is easy to become lost and which is potentially dangerous, especially for women.

In order to find a periphery that is genuinely frightening, however, we must turn to Scerbanenco’s Lamberti novels. As Foot has pointed out, the Milanese periphery has outgrown the city centre since the boom years.⁹⁹ In the 1950s and 1960s several new neighbourhoods, such as Comasina, Quarto Oggiaro, Gratosoglio and Gallaratese, were developed to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of unskilled immigrant workers who moved to Milan in those years. These modern peripheries were an addition to the older ones that had developed during the first industrial revolution of the early 1900s. Already in the 1950s Milan’s municipal boundaries stretched from Monza in the North to Pavia in the South.¹⁰⁰ Some of the newly developed suburbs became soon infamous as crime-ridden areas and ghettos for Southern immigrants, especially Comasina and Quarto Oggiaro in Milan and La Falchera, Mirafiori Sud and Le Vallette in Turin.¹⁰¹ It is easy to see how these areas, which became associated with poverty, marginalization and crime, fuelled the imagination of the writers who in those years were writing about crime and the city.

While Scerbanenco makes no real distinction between the city centre and peripheries, for in his novels these are equally unsafe, it is true that the suburbs enable criminals to act more discreetly and to escape the city more easily if necessary.¹⁰² To put it simply, what happens in the periphery is less traceable. In I ragazzi del massacro Duca refuses to believe that the students who have killed their teacher Matilde have done so because they were after some fun or were driven by some uncontrollable impulse. He rejects this idea on the basis of the fact that ‘da piazzale Loreto al Parco Lambro hanno tutti i posti che vogliono per organizzare certe festine senza correre quasi nessun pericolo di essere presi’ [from the Piazzale Loreto to Parco Lambro they have all the places they want to organize certain parties without running any appreciable danger of being caught].¹⁰³ In other words, these students, who come from deprived, unsafe urban areas (Parco Lambro in particular being a historical hot spot for drug-dealing),¹⁰⁴ may find other ways to vent their impulses. Duca believes they have been spurred on by someone else, most likely an adult with a proper motive. We know that he is right and that Marisela Domenici masterminded the murder plot. While the periphery affords more opportunities for illicit activities, it also allows criminals to keep a strong connection with the wider city thanks to the enhanced road networks. Maintaining this connection is crucial, for a limited access to the resources offered by the city means less business and a higher risk of being caught. This is why, in I ragazzi del massacro, Duca is able to figure out that Marisella and Carolino (the student she has kidnapped) must be hidden somewhere in the periphery or in some place not far from Milan:

Un rifugio come questo, non esiste in una città, al massimo alla sua estrema periferia, molto più facilmente in campagna, anche vicino alla città, ma non in un paese, un paese piccolo è il luogo più pericoloso che esista per nascondersi.¹⁰⁵

[A hiding-place like this does not exist in a city, at best on its extreme periphery, but much more easily in the countryside, perhaps also close to the city, but not in a village, a small village is the most dangerous place to hide.]

The issue of the social and anthropological implications of economic change comes to the fore more starkly with the characters who come from the suburbs as areas that have allegedly failed to forge a positive sense of community and identity.¹⁰⁶ The students of I ragazzi del massacro come from socially disadvantaged families who live in the peripheral areas of Milan. The files that Duca examines at the police headquarters on the night of the interrogation contain detailed information about their family situations, with parents who are alcoholics, drug addicts or at best simply neglectful. That being said, Scerbanenco also restores aesthetic dignity to the periphery as a privileged setting for his crime stories. In Traditori di tutti, for example, one reads that ‘Ca’ Tarino fa parte di Romano Banco, che è una frazione di Buccinasco, che è un comune vicino a Corsico, che è vicino a Milano, praticamente è sempre Milano’ [Ca’ Tarino is an area of Romano Banco, which is part of the commune of Buccinasco, adjoining that of Corsico. Both are outlying suburbs of Milan. Corsico, indeed, is almost an integral part of Milan] (TT, p. 148; DM, p. 132). Scerbanenco recognizes the periphery as integral to Milan’s identity and in this sense rejects a superficial binary opposition between centre and periphery.

Like Bianciardi and Volponi, Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini document the difficulty of apprehending dramatic social and spatial transformations. They do so by focusing on aspects of the built environment that evoke feelings of disorientation and bewilderment. Scerbanenco depicts an urban landscape of deserted streets, anonymous buildings and places that appear distorted in the darkness of the night. These urban descriptions convey social disorientation in the Milan of the boom and hint at the shortcomings of the post-war development strategy in tackling the collective dimension of socio-economic changes. The rise of mindless violence on the streets of Milan, which most directly affects the urban poor and more vulnerable, is a further indication that these people have been failed by economic growth. Scerbanenco’s Milan is dark and violent. His Lamberti novels accentuate the sensation of unease through problematic endings, a feature which seemingly questions the very possibility of enduring social justice. Fruttero & Lucentini’s Turin is ambiguous and deceptive, familiar and yet strange. In both La donna della domenica and A che punto è la notte the multiple perspectives brought by characters who are inspired by real Turinese types form a composite picture of the changing urban landscape in the 1970s.

Urban space becomes the locus where feelings of anxiety and lack of direction are projected. The writers bring to the fore the enigmatic, unfathomable aspects of urban space which reveal a darker side to the process of modernization, its contradictions beyond the reassuring narrative of progress. The notion of the uncanny helps, on the one hand, to illuminate the issue of rapid changes that affect customary ways of life, shifting the boundaries of the familiar and unfamiliar; on the other, it helps to shed further light on Italy’s unresolved past. In the analysis in this chapter the theme of the past emerges in different ways: for example, through its negation in Scerbanenco’s portrayal of a Milan of the present, almost completely devoid of references to the past, and through the conflict between old and new Turin in La donna della domenica. This conflict is perfectly embodied by the figure of Tabusso: a wealthy aristocratic woman whose declining fortune tells us that she is about to make room for younger, more dynamic social figures. The perception of urbanization and industrialization as rupture is revealing of controversial attitudes towards the past more broadly. In A che punto è la notte modern and traditional values clash in the descriptions of the bleak suburban setting where recently built housing developments look dilapidated and underused, familiar urban features have grown fainter and it is easy to feel disoriented and lose one’s way. In these descriptions one may perceive the nostalgia for more traditional urban models.

This chapter then explores the link between rapid urbanization and the evolution of crime by providing examples of how, in the selected writings, crime mirrors the growth of the city and follows the geography of industrialization. Particular attention is given to the representation of the periphery as a geographical and anthropological entity that occupies a specific uncanny and eerie imagery. The novels of Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini generally represent the suburbs as desolate and architecturally unpleasant, places that have failed to forge a sense of community and where criminality may take root more easily. In the Lamberti novels city centre and peripheries are equally dangerous but, in the latter, the negative aspects of urbanization are somehow exacerbated. In Fruttero & Lucentini’s novels, and especially in A che punto è la notte, the periphery lacks history, identity and coherence with the rest of the city. As seen above, the idea of the periphery as a place that does not meet certain standards of good living and is potentially dangerous is generally measured against a hegemonic and ideal model of the city. The periphery is, in fact, a relative concept: on the one hand, it is constantly being reshaped and, on the other, it is defined subjectively. For instance, for the rich Anna Carla, who enjoys a privileged position in Turin’s urban society, the periphery is what lies just outside her elegant neighbourhood. The periphery is also potentially more dangerous for her as a woman. By establishing it as the setting where their stories unfold, Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini assign equal dignity to centre and periphery, even though the representation of the latter is not devoid of stereotypes.

While Milan and Turin share some significant traits as major hubs of the so-called Northern Industrial Triangle, comprising Lombardy, Piedmont, and Genoa, in the novels examined in this chapter they are different in terms of the types of crime that are committed and the criminals who operate within their territory. Milan is arguably the most cosmopolitan of Italian cities, has historically filtered innovations from abroad and has been at the centre of the main historical movements and events of twentieth-century Italy, constantly re-inventing itself.¹⁰⁷ Milan is a city that has traditionally taken pride in its hard-working mentality or, as John Foot puts it, the ‘American qualities of dynamism, profit and attraction’.¹⁰⁸ It seems, therefore, apt for Scerbanenco to draw on the tradition of the American hard-boiled to portray an urban environment in which the culture of personal gain has won the upper hand over human compassion and solidarity and violence is commonplace. Luca Crovi refers to this as the mythology of murder ‘Milanese-style’.¹⁰⁹ In comparison to Milan, Turin is seemingly more inward-looking and conservative. This does not come as a surprise, since the identity of Turin has largely been shaped by the presence of the Italian monarchy and subsequently of the Italian flagship car manufacturer Fiat. The overall picture is, of course, more complex. Robert Lumley, for instance, points out that in post-war Turin urbanization and industrialization led to a more cosmopolitan cultural society and a greater interest in innovation.¹¹⁰ Nevertheless, it may be argued that Turin’s more pronounced resistance to change, compared to Milan, is reflected in Fruttero & Lucentini’s kind of locked-room murder and in criminal intrigues which are hatched within the upper-class environment, as in the example of La donna della domenica. The novels by Scerbanenco and Fruttero & Lucentini lend themselves to an analysis of the differences between the noir and the traditional detective story, two sub-genres of the crime fiction tradition. It has been pointed out, for instance, that the traditional giallo is more conventional in its displaying of the detective’s investigation that leads up to the solution of the case, while the noir shakes up established norms by giving a complex representation of reality and by rejecting the happy ending or final restoration of order.¹¹¹