Via delle Oche /

The final volume in Lucarelli's De Luca trilogy finds the Italian policeman back on the force, this time in Bologna in 1948. Political reprisals are still the order of the day, as the postwar climate remains tumultuous. De Luca is trying to stay under the radar, his past employment with Mussolini's secret police likely to derail his career at any moment. Self-preservation dictates that he stay away from a hot-potato case involving the suicide (or murder) of a gofer at one of Bologna's licensed brothels, but De Luca can't resist the temptation to follow the clues wherever they lead, which, inevitably, is straight toward a political scandal. Set in the days prior to a contentious general election pitting Communists against right-wing Christian Democrats, the novel may prove difficult to follow for those not familiar with postwar Italian politics, but the general milieu a cop trying to do his job but running afoul of departmental turf-builders will strike home with anyone who has watched The Wire (or even just worked in any kind of office). Give this to fans of Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen novels.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2008 Booklist

Set in 1948, Lucarelli's magnificent final volume in his De Luca trilogy (after The Damned Season and Carte Blanche) delivers a resolution true to the series' moral relativism. Soon after joining the vice squad of the Bologna police department, Commissario De Luca gets dragged from his usual low-pressure duties into investigating a murder at a whorehouse in the city's red-light district. Despite clear evidence that the victim, Ermes Ricciotti, who worked at a rival establishment, could not have hanged himself, the authorities classify Ricciotti as a suicide. After another violent death, De Luca again strays outside his brief, finding evidence that the second crime had a connection to the first. The book ends on a nicely ambiguous note. On a par with J. Robert Janes's mysteries set in Vichy France, the series as a whole does an excellent job of conveying the challenges of policing in a police state--and, postwar, in a country where the police act as if it still were. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved