Black Ribbons whined, “We’ll give you ten thousand.”
“Eight thousand!” the eldest snapped.
“Ten thousand,” Jolanda pleaded.
Just then, while Carlo Da Como smiled sarcastically, preparing his response, the telephone rang. Mario ran to answer it and immediately reappeared at the door to the toilets—for the phone was in there—holding the receiver in one hand.
“Signor Besesti, the Bank of Pure Metals is on the line…”
Did you know?
In 1929, when the Italian publisher Mondadori launched their popular series of crime and thriller titles (clad in the yellow jackets that would later give their name to the wider giallo tradition of Italian books and films) there were no Italian authors on the list. Many thought that Italy was inherently infertile ground for the thriller genre, with one critic claiming that a detective novel set in such a sleepy Mediterranean country was an “absurd hypothesis”. Augusto De Angelis strongly disagreed. He saw crime fiction as the natural product of his fraught and violent times: “The detective novel is the fruit – the red, bloodied fruit of our age.”
The question had a political significance too – the Marxist Antonio Gramsci was fascinated by the phenomenon of crime fiction, and saw in its unifying popularity a potential catalyst for revolutionary change. Benito Mussolini and his Fascist regime were also interested in the genre, although their attitude towards it was confused – on the one hand they approved of the triumph of the forces of order over degeneracy and chaos that most thriller plots involved; on the other hand they were wary of representations of their Italian homeland as anything less than a harmonious idyll.
This is the background against which Augusto De Angelis’s The Murdered Banker appeared in 1935, the first of 20 novels starring Inspector De Vincenzi to be published over the next eight years. This period saw the peak of the British Golden Age puzzle mystery tradition, and the rise of the American hardboiled genre. However, De Angelis created a style all his own, with a detective who is more complex than the British “thinking machine” typified by Sherlock Holmes, but more sensitive than the tough-guy American private eye.
His originality won De Angelis great popularity, and a reputation as the father of the Italian mystery novel. Unfortunately, it also attracted the attention of the Fascist authorities, who censored De Angelis’s work. After writing a number of anti-Fascist articles, De Angelis was finally arrested in 1943. Although he was released three months later, he was soon beaten up by a Fascist thug and died from his injuries in 1944.
So, where do you go from here?
To follow De Vincenzi on his next investigation, as he hunts a killer among the mannequins of a Milan fashion house, pick up The Mystery of the Three Orchids.
Or, if you fancy attempting to solve a seemingly impossible series of crimes, take a look at Soji Shimada’s legendary locked-room mystery, The Tokyo Zodiac Murders.
AVAILABLE AND COMING SOON FROM PUSHKIN VERTIGO
Jonathan Ames
You Were Never Really Here
Augusto De Angelis
The Murdered Banker
The Mystery of the Three Orchids
The Hotel of the Three Roses
María Angélica Bosco
Death Going Down
Piero Chiara
The Disappearance of Signora Giulia
Frédéric Dard
The Switch
The Wretches
The Wicked Go to Hell
Martin Holmén
Clinch
Alexander Lernet-Holenia
I Was Jack Mortimer
Boileau-Narcejac
Vertigo
She Who Was No More
Leo Perutz
Master of the Day of Judgment
Little Apple
St Peter’s Snow
Soji Shimada
The Tokyo Zodiac Murders
Seishi Yokomizo
The Inugami Clan
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Copyright
Pushkin Vertigo
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First published in Italian as L’albergo delle Tre Rose by Aurora in 1936
Translation © Jill Foulston, 2016
First published by Pushkin Vertigo in 2016
ISBN 978 1 782271 84 0
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