"I'm a policeman!"

That's what Commissario De Luca keeps telling anyone who'll listen -- suspects, colleagues, former colleagues, the general public -- but then, it's early 1945, the final days of Mussolini's regime, and De Luca has only just completed his transfer to the "real" police from the kind of political police who had a track record torturing people.

De Luca wants to solve the crime he's presented with -- the murder of a man with important connections -- but he wants to do it right, by finding the real villain, not the politically correct villain. His efforts to do so are the focus of this tightly-written, spare, gritty novel, the first in a trilogy.

I tend to prefer more character development in my mysteries, so while the writing (and translation) were excellent and Lucarelli does a lot with only a few words, I've given this 3.8 stars. But I'm definitely moving on to the two other books in this trilogy! You can read more comments on this on my blog... http://uncommonreading.blogspot.com/2011/07/europa-challenge-im-policeman.html.

By the way, as we seem to have two Suzannes in this challenge and I was the second to start posting, I'm adding the name of my blog, Uncommon Reading, to the labels, and that seems to be how I'll show up in the index.

Happy reading to all!