The Goodbye Kiss, by Massimo Carlotto. Published 2006 by Europa Editions.
One thing you can say about the crime novels of Massimo Carlotto is that as dark and as violent as they are, they
will make you feel better about your life, because nothing that's ever
happened to me holds a candle to an ordinary day in the life of Mr.
Carlotto's protagonists.
In The Goodbye Kiss we
meet gleeful psychopath
Giorgio Pellegrini, a career criminal who prances from one trainwreck to
the next but
always comes off without a scratch. The one-time revolutionary is back
on the scene in Italy after some time in Central America and stint in
prison and all he wants is respectability. To get it, he's willing and
able to indulge in all manner of
bloody, violent, nasty shenanigans. But the thing is, he's a lot of fun.
Hilarious. I might be tempted to call him an unreliable narrator but
the fact is he's scrupulously honest with the reader about who he is and
what's he about, even when he's lying his pants off to everyone else.
Most of the book is taken up with a big heist he's planning, which he hopes will net him a hefty payday and bankroll his new "respectable" life. The only hitch is, he can't leave any witnesses. Along the way he plots with a veritable rogues' gallery of accomplices, amuses himself with various women who aren't always amused with him, and generally acts nice right up to the point where the bullets start flying and the bodies start piling up. It sounds grim, but it's a riot. And having just read Cooking with Fernet Branca I had to laugh
when a bottle of the stuff turned up in this book under very different
and for one character, highly unfortunate circumstances.
Which
brings me to the only thing that doesn't make me laugh about Giorgio,
and about Carlotto's books more generally- the way Carlotto's female
characters are routinely degraded and tortured. I suppose one could say
he's being all Stieg Larssonish about it, showing us the horrors
perpetrated on women in order to expose them. So we get ample helpings
of rape, prostitution, and other manner of violations against just about
every woman in this and Carlotto's other books (at least the three I've
read). But unlike Larsson, Carlotto's brutality isn't presented as
fantasy porn. And the truth is, as badly as his women fare, they're no
worse off than the men.
So, I really enjoyed The Goodbye Kiss.
Giorgio is appalling- a horror of a human being. But Carlotto creates
such a charismatic bad boy that his adventures are just a roller coaster
good time. Turn off your inner feminist and
come along for the ride!
This is my fifth book for the 2012 Europa Challenge.