Praise for Bandit Love
“All the hallmarks of noir are here: bloodbaths galore, a false-floored plot, a plainspoken and staccato style (the translation is smooth), and a hero who's simultaneously ruthless and sensitive, with a quirky but precisely calibrated moral sense that Carlotto explores and explains with panache. And the setting is beautifully—if grimly—realized. La dolce vita it ain't—but this is top-notch Mediterranean noir.”
— Kirkus Reviews
“[A] lean, taut crime novel [...] Andrea Camilleri fans looking for something a little darker will be rewarded. ”
—Publishers Weekly
“Carlotto’s brand of crime writing is tougher than even the toughest American noir.”
—Josh Bazell, author of Beat the Reaper
“ Bandit Love is a gripping novel that can be read on different levels, as a breathtakingly dark noir novel or as a means of penetrating reality. These two levels magically blend in Massimo Carlotto's books.”
— Il Manifesto
“A cocktail of mystery and romanticism, a novel in which there are no real heroes and no signs of redemption. In short, classic Carlotto.”
— Rolling Stone (Italy)
“Carlotto is a master of the genre. He keeps the reader on the edge of his seat from start to finish with compact, incisive storytelling.”
— Il Giornale de Vicenza
“Once again, gangsters and beatuiful women, plot twists and rampant crime become the means through which Carlotto recounts the impossibility of living in a country overrun by constructed fears, unbridled excess, and hideous overpasses.”
— L'Unità
Praise for Massimo Carlotto
“Massimo Carlotto has a history as riveting as any novel.”
—Chicago Tribune
“Carlotto is the reigning king of Mediterranean noir.”
—The Boston Phoenix
"In hardboiled fiction, there is this hardcore Italian guy I suggest: Massimo Carlotto. Tough as fuck."
—Guillermo del Toro, Director
“The best living Italian crime writer.”
—Il Manifesto
Mediterranean Noir “packs plenty of plot into a slim volume, with space set aside for elaborate northeast Italian meals, musings on women, and plenty of Calvados drinking.”
— The Daily Beast
“Carlotto's taut, broody Mediterranean noir is filled with blind corners and savage set pieces.”
—The New Yorker
“Beneath the conventions of Continental noir is a remarkable study of corruption and redemption in a world where revenge is best served ice-cold.”
— Kirkus Reviews
The tense, fast-paced book by Italiancrime writer Carlotto is both familiar (in form, tone and plot, this hearkens back to 1930s noir by masters like Hammett, Chandler and Cain) and exotic (in its European settings—these are the mean streets not of Los Angeles or Chicago, but of Padua).
Nearing 50, Marco "The Alligator" Buratti isa retired mobster, or anyway a mobster who would dearly like to be retired, left to sip Calvados and listen toblues in the dive he co-owns, "The Dog's Bed." He's now a small-scale private investigator and fixer, also a part-time righter of wrongs againstmistreated prostitutes. But when his old friend Beniamino Rossini's beloved is kidnapped and put into sexual bondage by the diabolically vengeful partner of a man Buratti, Rossini andtheir pal Max the Memorykilled years earlier, the three have no choice but tore-enter the game.Part of the reason they've stayed alive into middle age is that they've studiously avoided drug trafficking, with its unpredictabilityand extreme violence, but this casetakes them quickly and deeply intoconflict with a savage Eastern European drug cartel that's been funneling drugs from the former Yugoslavia into Italy and beyond.All the hallmarks of noir are here: bloodbaths galore, a false-floored plot, a plainspoken and staccato style (the translation is smooth), and a hero who'ssimultaneously ruthless and sensitive, with a quirkybut precisely calibrated moral sense that Carlotto explores and explains with panache. And the setting is beautifully—if grimly—realized.
La dolce vita it ain't—but this is top-notch Mediterranean noir.