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Roberto Costantini in conversation with Raffaella Ocone

Roberto Costantini, detective story writer, and Raffaella Ocone, academic, will continue to explore the latest enduring success of detective story.

At the centre of the latest Costantini’s novel “The Perfect Wife” looms the figure of Michele Balistreri, already well known to readers of the acclaimed “Commissario Balistreri Trilogy” (The Deliverance of Evil, 2011; The Root of All Evil, 2012; The Memory of Evil, 2014, all published by Marsilio).

Costantini updates the classic portrayal of the bitter, disillusioned cop, constantly haunted by ghosts from the past. The childhood in Libya, the mother who threw herself off a cliff, the delinquent adolescence, the escape to Italy, the Sicilian relations with a whiff of the mafia, the extreme right-wing militancy, the friends betrayed by going undercover in the secret service, and – naturally – a dissolute love of whisky, poker and women. With a fiery temper that likens him to his contemporary Salvo Montalbano (they are both born in 1950), Balistreri is truly “an exceptional policeman and a detestable man”.

Similarly in “The Perfect Wife”, Bianca Benigni the public prosecutor he finds himself working with, could be called “an exceptional lawyer and a detestable woman”. Surrounding these two is a wide-ranging cast: Coppola, Balistreri’s sharp-tongued and likeable sidekick. Psychologist Giovanni Annabaldi, Bianca’s husband. The brutish professor Bonocore and his equally ambiguous lovers, the Steele sisters. Sordomuto, Pucicone and other small, medium and large-scale Roman criminals, all sketched with a firm hand. (http://goo.gl/tEXX49)  

Roberto Costantini born in Tripoli in 1952, formerly an engineer and business consultant is currently a manager at the LUISS University of Rome. His literary debut was the novel The Deliverance of Evil (Marsilio, 2011), the first instalment of a bestselling trilogy which has won numerous awards, not least the Premio Scerbanenco.

Raffaella Ocone is an engineer and academic at Heriot Watt University. Her written academic contributions are of a technical nature, but she is fascinated by crime stories and the technical precision of making them work. 

Photo by Giliola Chistè

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  • Organizzato da: Italian Cultural Institute, Edinburgh
  • In collaborazione con: Heriot Watt University