Once again Rome in the 1950s, once again an investigation by Commissioner Agostino Clodoveo. Who, between Lambrettas and Vespasians, ladies of charity and roasted chestnuts, passes from the villas of the lords to the platforms of Termini station, from the morgue to the naves of an ancient church. Pursuing only one thing: the truth… ‘La Giostra del Perdono’ (Piemme), the new novel by Cristina Stillitano, already crowned queen of noir by Amazon readers (VIDEO), is out tomorrow. “The plot, as in the previous novels, is complex, articulated on several levels, with a tight succession of events in the finale. For the plot I was inspired a little by one of the masters of English detective stories, Francis Durbridge, especially his taste for intriguing coincidences and unsettling twists (I love the old Rai dramas that bore her signature)”, explains the writer who has acquired wide notoriety with self-publishing and already with the first episode of the series Le inchieste di Clodoveo, published in 2018, it was rewarded by Amazon readers, placing first in the rankings among the bestsellers in the noir category.
“Even in this novel – adds Stillitano – I looked for strong, complex, difficult to decipher characters. The goal is to let emerge, little by little, deep sides of the character who, in the end, redeem or at least give a touch of humanity even to the ‘bad guys’. In the books I always try to maintain a touch of lightness. I like to alternate the two registers, the dramatic and the ironic, coloring grotesque situations and characters.
‘The carousel of forgiveness’, says the writer, “is set in February 1956 during the famous snowfall. The snow, with its symbolisms, is the leitmotif of a story that unfolds around the small, great thread of redemption” . Together with Commissioner Clodoveo, the protagonist is post-war Rome, “with the rubble just behind it, with the desire to rebuild and forget, tense and hopeful towards the future. The Rome that discovered the refrigerator, the TV, the car, the Lambretta, which is the means of locomotion of our protagonist. In this episode, the inspector wanders around a beautiful and surreal city, wrapped in the deep and silent spell of the snow”.
“Gruff with a tender heart, a big man with the spitting face of a cop”, Agostino Clodoveo was immediately appreciated by the public. “Perhaps – the author imagines – precisely because of his imperfections that make him a little different from his ‘infallible’ colleagues. After all, one must think that being a commissioner in the 1950s meant carrying out an investigation in a completely different from what we imagine today. There is no DNA or modern instruments. Only clues, stalking, interrogations and informants who barter the clemency of the police for a few tips at the right time. And so Clovis makes mistakes, corrects himself, sometimes loses. A reader , shocking me a little, called him ‘a serial loser’. He certainly isn’t a Sherlock Holmes. No detective in reality can be one. But he compensates with his great stubbornness. And humanity: to see the criminal you have to know understand the man first”. In this work “of painstaking reconstruction, in addition to research on sources, “the readers have helped me, entrusting me with their precious ‘amarcord’.
Cristina Stillitano, professional journalist and writer, lives and works in Rome. In 2018 you published the first episode of the series The investigations of Clovis: ‘The heart of a sparrow has death’. Two other self-published successes followed the first: ‘La donna a mezzo’ (The investigations of Clovis volume 2) and the third, winner of the Amazon Storyteller 2021 literary award ‘Andrai Tornerai Non Morirai (The investigations of Clovis volume 3). Each novel advances one year: the first is set in Rome in 1953, the fourth in the capital in 1956.