In the bleak Milan suburb of Metanopoli, in the late 1960s, a dead woman is found along the side of the road. Duca Lamberti is a medical doctor who has just been released from prison, where he has spent three years for having practised euthanasia. He is approached by the rich industrialist Auseri who asks Duca to cure his son Davide of his drinking habit. After an attempted suicide, Davide explains to Duca how he had met Alberta, the young girl who was found dead a few days earlier, death for which he feels responsible. Duca is compelled to find out the truth, and with the help of Alberta s friend Livia Ussaro, he and Davide support the police in uncovering a complex circle of crime, where Duca will have to find his own justice.
A Private Venus (Duca Lamberti)
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About the Author
Giorgio Scerbanenco was born in the Ukraine in 1911 but his family emigrated to Italy when he was very young. Although he wrote in several genres he is considered the father of Italian crime fiction and has a prestigious crime fiction prize named after him. His literary production was vast, and many of his novels have been dramatized for cinema and television in Italian, Spanish and French.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By GW
Format:Paperback
This is the first English translation of this Italian crime fiction classic, which was first published in 1966. Indeed it's only the second of Scerbanenco's books to be translated into English, which seems odd considering, as is made clear in the informative introduction by Giuliana Pieri, he is regarded as something of a key figure in the genre, and has Italy's most prestigious crime fiction prize named after him.
The first in a series featuring Dr Duca Lamberti, It's an unusual, dark story, but underscored with shots of humour and some lovely writing. It is certainly noir, in that the streets of Metanopoli - a suburb of Milan - are portrayed as bleak and dangerous, and everyone has something to hide.
Scerbanenco dedicates a large part of the novel to exploring Duca's history and his relationship with Davide, the young man he is hired to mind. This results in Duca emerging as an interesting and well-realised character, albeit at the expense of the plot in the first third of the book. As with lots of noir thrillers, though, you can ignore this and just get lost in the writing. Duca is a promising noir hero: an investigator only by chance, a ton of baggage, and and a cynical outlook forged by his mistreatment at the hands of society when he only ever tried to do the right thing.
Scerbanenco's writing also shares with fellow noir authors a level of sexism and homophobia that will jar with modern readers, but that goes with the territory. I can't understand why Scerbanenco's work has not appeared in English before, I hope Hersilia Press will be able to bring us more.
The first in a series featuring Dr Duca Lamberti, It's an unusual, dark story, but underscored with shots of humour and some lovely writing. It is certainly noir, in that the streets of Metanopoli - a suburb of Milan - are portrayed as bleak and dangerous, and everyone has something to hide.
Scerbanenco dedicates a large part of the novel to exploring Duca's history and his relationship with Davide, the young man he is hired to mind. This results in Duca emerging as an interesting and well-realised character, albeit at the expense of the plot in the first third of the book. As with lots of noir thrillers, though, you can ignore this and just get lost in the writing. Duca is a promising noir hero: an investigator only by chance, a ton of baggage, and and a cynical outlook forged by his mistreatment at the hands of society when he only ever tried to do the right thing.
Scerbanenco's writing also shares with fellow noir authors a level of sexism and homophobia that will jar with modern readers, but that goes with the territory. I can't understand why Scerbanenco's work has not appeared in English before, I hope Hersilia Press will be able to bring us more.
Format:Paperback
A Private Venus was first published in 1966. It is set in Milan, a city which, in his novels, Scerbanenco almost created as a capital of crime to rival New York and Los Angeles. As the book opens we meet Duca Lamberti, a doctor newly released from prison having served three years for practising euthanasia on an elderly patient who was begging him to end her life.
Lamberti was struck off the doctor's register because of his crime and needs to find a job. Through an old contact in the police he is referred to a wealthy plastics engineer, Pietro Auseri who is looking for someone to cure his son of chronic alcoholism. The engineer has tried everything to cure his son, including physical violence, but now he wishes to make one last attemptby finding "someone who could be both a friend and a doctor, who'd use any method he wanted to make him stop drinking, who'd stop him physically every minute of the day, even in the toilet".
Duca Lamberti seems to have little option other than to take on this difficult case. The young man, Davide, seems to be completely withdrawn into himself and barely speaks. However, Lamberti discovers that he has only been drinking so heavily for the last year; clearly something traumatic must have happened to him to provoke such a serious reaction. Auseri gives Lamberti a substantial sum of money and the ex-doctor and the young man go off to stay with Lamberti's sister, where Lamberti begins the therapy which he hopes will give the key which will unlock the secret behind Davide's predicament.
Before long we discover that Davide is consumed by guilt. He believes that he is responsible for the death of young woman, Alberta Radelli, who he met about a year ago. Duca Lamberti still has a friend in the police force, Superintendent Luigi Carrua.... Read more ›
Lamberti was struck off the doctor's register because of his crime and needs to find a job. Through an old contact in the police he is referred to a wealthy plastics engineer, Pietro Auseri who is looking for someone to cure his son of chronic alcoholism. The engineer has tried everything to cure his son, including physical violence, but now he wishes to make one last attemptby finding "someone who could be both a friend and a doctor, who'd use any method he wanted to make him stop drinking, who'd stop him physically every minute of the day, even in the toilet".
Duca Lamberti seems to have little option other than to take on this difficult case. The young man, Davide, seems to be completely withdrawn into himself and barely speaks. However, Lamberti discovers that he has only been drinking so heavily for the last year; clearly something traumatic must have happened to him to provoke such a serious reaction. Auseri gives Lamberti a substantial sum of money and the ex-doctor and the young man go off to stay with Lamberti's sister, where Lamberti begins the therapy which he hopes will give the key which will unlock the secret behind Davide's predicament.
Before long we discover that Davide is consumed by guilt. He believes that he is responsible for the death of young woman, Alberta Radelli, who he met about a year ago. Duca Lamberti still has a friend in the police force, Superintendent Luigi Carrua.... Read more ›
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5.0 out of 5 stars
3 reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Master
29 April 2013
By Montalbano
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
No wonder the Italians named their premier crime fiction award after this guy (Premio Scerbanenco). Hard to believe it was written in the 1960s - has not dated at all. The translation has been a long time coming, but definitely worth the wait. Although different in style from Dashiell Hammett, he gets a similar impact from a similar economy of words. Bring on the next one.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dames, a doc, a death, and a diagnosis of entropy
27 Mar 2013
By propertius
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book has all the warmth of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." Talk about a return to noir mysteries a la Bulldog Drummond, Christopher Marlowe, Mike Hammer etc. one realizes that this book was written in 1965. What is unthinkable now, was quite acceptable at least in the world of detective mysteries. I found particularly interesting a minor character, the police official Mascaranti, who quite seriously and innocentely asks if the police commisioner wants him to beat the information out of a suspect.
More than anything else though, I find the stoic pessimism of the protagonist, indeed his entire character enchanting. Dr. Duca is a doctor convincted of euthanasia with little chance of returning to practice after serving his sentence of three years. Being the son of a police officer, and the friend of the current police inspector, the bellowing Carrua, helps him land a job, of trying to discover the causes the alcoholism in a wealthy young man.
How this leads to a murder investigation, a lesbianesque professor, two separate murders in Rome and Milan and a philatelist is what makes this a fascinating mystery novel. What makes this an interesting book is the dark world of crime and society as seen through the prism of 1965 era glasses. And about the dames, well I guess if Mr. Scerbanenco were still alive Mr. Scerbanenco would apologize a little, just a little. But they are intriguing characters and if a little dated they also hold hints of modern feminism which sadly Giorgio Scerbanenco was not around to see.
More than anything else though, I find the stoic pessimism of the protagonist, indeed his entire character enchanting. Dr. Duca is a doctor convincted of euthanasia with little chance of returning to practice after serving his sentence of three years. Being the son of a police officer, and the friend of the current police inspector, the bellowing Carrua, helps him land a job, of trying to discover the causes the alcoholism in a wealthy young man.
How this leads to a murder investigation, a lesbianesque professor, two separate murders in Rome and Milan and a philatelist is what makes this a fascinating mystery novel. What makes this an interesting book is the dark world of crime and society as seen through the prism of 1965 era glasses. And about the dames, well I guess if Mr. Scerbanenco were still alive Mr. Scerbanenco would apologize a little, just a little. But they are intriguing characters and if a little dated they also hold hints of modern feminism which sadly Giorgio Scerbanenco was not around to see.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Giorgio Scerbanenco, dark maestro of Italian noir
22 Feb 2013
By DBB
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
I can't quite figure out whom Giorgio Scerbanenco reminds me of most. He can be as dark as Leonardo Sciascia, as deadpan realistic as Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, as probing in his observation of people as Simenon, as humane as Camilleri, as noir as Manchette, as hope-against-hopeful as David Goodis, but with a dark, dark humor all his own.
In short, the first-ever English translation of his 1966 novel A Private Venus (Venere Privata) has to be the year's biggest event yet for readers of translated crime fiction, and I hope its status as a new book in English makes it eligible for the big crime-fiction awards in the U.S. and U.K. next year.
Here's a passage that sums up the novel's intriguing mix of involvement, alienation, social observation and wry, dark self-awareness:
"Everything was going wrong, the only thing that worked was the air conditioning in those two rooms in the Hotel Cavour, cool without being damp and without smelling odd; everything was going badly wrong in a way that the confident, efficient Milanese who passed, sweating, along the Via Fatebenefratelli or through the Piazza Cavour couldn't begin to imagine, even though they read stories like this every day in the Corriere. For them, these stories belonged to a fourth dimension, devised by an Einstein of crime, who was even more incomprehensible than the Einstein of physics. What was real was going to the tobacconist to buy filter cigarettes, so that they didn't feel so bad about smoking ... "
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
[...]
In short, the first-ever English translation of his 1966 novel A Private Venus (Venere Privata) has to be the year's biggest event yet for readers of translated crime fiction, and I hope its status as a new book in English makes it eligible for the big crime-fiction awards in the U.S. and U.K. next year.
Here's a passage that sums up the novel's intriguing mix of involvement, alienation, social observation and wry, dark self-awareness:
"Everything was going wrong, the only thing that worked was the air conditioning in those two rooms in the Hotel Cavour, cool without being damp and without smelling odd; everything was going badly wrong in a way that the confident, efficient Milanese who passed, sweating, along the Via Fatebenefratelli or through the Piazza Cavour couldn't begin to imagine, even though they read stories like this every day in the Corriere. For them, these stories belonged to a fourth dimension, devised by an Einstein of crime, who was even more incomprehensible than the Einstein of physics. What was real was going to the tobacconist to buy filter cigarettes, so that they didn't feel so bad about smoking ... "
======================
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
[...]
›
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