HE MASTER OF KNOTS. By Massimo Carlotto. Translated by Christopher Woodall. 184pp. Orion. £12.99. - 0 75285 735 5
The final defeat of the investigators in this startling novel comes when they have to call in the police to arrest the man responsible for the monstrous crimes they have solved. Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot may have viewed the plodding, purblind bobbies with lofty contempt, but they knew that once their enquiries were completed, it was the task of the agents of the State to deliver the guilty party to justice. But this is Italy at the dawn of the new millennium, and the chances are that the police, the magistrates and the whole apparatus of government are every bit as corrupt as the lawbreakers our investigators are pursuing.
All three detectives have done time. Alligator, the leading operator, is a hard-talking, hard-bitten rough diamond who has, like his creator, spent years in jail for a crime he did not commit; so too has his sidekick Max, a slightly soured idealist of the 1960s generation, who is still sufficiently committed to anti-globalization causes to demonstrate, disastrously, in Genoa during the G8 Summit. Rossini, the third member of the firm, is a no-nonsense criminal who wears a bangle for every man he has killed, and who hates the police and prison officers.
In The Master of Knots, the rough-cast casing is wrapped around a surprisingly soft core. In spite of the array of macho toughness, Carlotto dramatizes a struggle between good and evil with the straightforward conviction of Agatha Christie. In the jungle of the modern city, the three men are latter-day knights errant, motivated by a belief in justice which they prefer to mete out themselves, rather than wait for the lumbering and unreliable mechanisms of the Italian state.
They have experienced its shortcomings on their own skin, so it is no surprise to hear Max asks Alligator whether in his work he was not "longing for justice, the justice the courts denied (him)". Even those who have a preference for due legal process would agree that there is little to be said for the hoodlums they are pursuing, a very modern gang who trade in S & M and snuff videos, and who find it more economical to kidnap women for these films rather than pay them wages. When Helena, a part-time prostitute with a line in masochist modelling goes missing, her husband turns to Alligator rather than to the police. The supposedly loving spouse, too, has much to hide.
It is a seedy, messy, violent, treacherous world, but it allows Massimo Carlotto to display his flair for narrative. Christopher Woodall's fluent translation strikes the right note consistently, but why does he call the city where Alligator resides by the Italian name "Padova" rather than the English Padua?