All Good Things Italian

I guess I'm celebrating my own Feast of St. Genaro in a way, reading nothing but Stansberry noir mysteries, eating tiramisu for breakfast and plodding along filling in the enormous monochromatic sky in my latest jig saw puzzle, Canaletto's painting of St. Mark's Plaza in Venice. Oh and drinking Prosecco as a last fling of summer. And watching Italian movies -- Scorcese's Last Temptation of Christ (with a wonderful compadre depiction of Judas by Harvey Kietel), and with subtitles, the Cannes winner The Son's Room.

But this is a book-based blog, so on to Stansberry. The Last Days of Il Duce is once again set in the old once Italian, now Chinese North Beach neighborhood of San Fransisco. It is one of his earlier books, not starring Dante Mancuso, but introducing other local characters who reappear in later stories. The introductory paragraph is one of the best I've encountered in years:

"My name is Niccolo Jones, and I'm writing this down in the prison yard at Coldwater Penitentiary. Three people I used to know are dead. Two of them I loved, the other I hated -- though lately I am less sure about the difference between those feelings. I tell myself it doesn't matter ... " How penultimately noir. Only after finishing the book, did I find out it not only won an Edgar in its category, but also was nominated for a Hammett, and he does write a la Dashiell.

Stansberry's San Fransisco is vivid, as engaging as Burke's bayous or Kennedy's Albany. These books are ones that should have been on our place-based book list last year. The sense of a lost community, still populated with living ghosts, echoing memories and faded photographs under the glass in empty neighborhood bars, not only created a threatening, dark atmosphere, but set the motivation of all characters. Family and history prevail, expressing themselves in genetic lust, avarice and ultimately, criminality.

This is not the kind of book that surprises you because you never could quite figure out who done it. Nick is not the only guilty party. The book is a development of his motivation and the crime (and lifetime of events) that brings him to shoot two. The two victims, as foretold in that first paragraph, can only in hindsight be categorized as heroine or villainess, corrupt capo or benefactor.

Hot on the heels of tearing through Il Duce, I read The Ancient Rain, thereby discovering the role of the title in a Stansberry plot. Like Il Duce, Ancient Rain evokes a time past, a series of events from decades ago that are the seeds that produce the crimes. This story is one of the Dante Mancuso series. Here Dante is gathering evidence for the defense of a man suspected as killing a bystander in an SLA bank robbery twenty-seven years ago.

Stansberry weaves character lines: the man who may not have done the crime, the daughter of the victim who becomes mentally unbalanced and impoverished financially and emotionally from witnessing her death, the vengeful detectives and prosecutors who take advantage of the post 9/11 terrorism fear to resurrect this cold case. It explores the case from the personal motives of all involved, wherein their own profiles and press are prime movers.

Taken side by side with Il Duce, and setting Dante aside, Nick begins his story in jail, admitting his guilt; Owens never reveals if he participated in the bank heist. The book plays with that ambiguity. The reader suspects but never knows for sure and the vigilante justice at the end does not feel truly just. Also comparing Ancient Rain with Hugo's Condemned Man and other books I've recently read on crime and punishment, I conclude the crime engages me more than the administering of the justice. Hugo's condemned man, because he never acknowledges either is charge or his complicity, is merely a mouthpiece for social reform, never a man learning from his remorse.