I kill, un assaggio
In I kill, crime author Giorgio Faletti's first novel, a runaway international bestseller, the police of Monte Carlo match wits with a ruthless and cunning serial killer.
Monte Carlo - a sunny place for shady people, it has been said - has more police and less crime per capita than any other nation on earth. The serial killer, who has dubbed himself No One, seems bent on making fools of the police. To achieve this goal, he has enlisted the reluctant aid of a popular radio talk show host. The police, in turn, must rely on the help of an acoustic child and an emotionally damaged ex-FBI agent.
Giorgio Faletti takes the reader on a Mediterranean noir thrill ride through the increasingly mean streets of Monte Carlo and the Cote d'Azur, as No One stalks - and flays - his victims.
I kill has sold 4,5 million copies worldwide, and is currently being made into a major motion picture with an international cast.
FIRST CARNIVAL
The man is one and no one.
For years, he has worn his face pasted to his head and his
shadow sewn to his feet, yet he still cannot tell which is heavier.
Sometimes, he has the irrepressible urge to tear them both off,
hang them on a nail, and sit down on the ground, like a puppet
whose strings have been cut by some pitying hand.
Other times, he is wiped out by exhaustion, which makes it
impossible to understand that the only path of reason is that of
surrender to madness. Around him is an endless series of faces
and shadows and voices, people who do not question, but
passively accept lives that don't answer for the boredom and
pain of the journey. They are content with sending the
occasional postcard.
There is music where he is. There are moving bodies, smiling
mouths, words exchanged. And he just stands among them, one
more person who watches curiously as, day by day, the
photograph fades away.
The man leans against a column and thinks that every one of
them is useless.
In front of him, at the far side of the room, two people, a man
and a woman, are sitting next to each other at a table near a large
window overlooking the garden.
In the soft light, she is as delicate and tender as melancholy.
She has black hair and green eyes, so luminous and large that the
man leaning on the column can see them even from where he
stands. Her companion is aware of nothing but her beauty, and
he whispers into her ear to make himself heard over the blaring
music.
They are holding hands and she is laughing at his words,
throwing her head back or hiding her face against his shoulder.
Just a moment ago, she turned, perhaps struck by the fixed
stare coming from the man across the room, seeking the cause of
that distant, uncomfortable sensation. Their eyes met for an
instant, but hers passed indifferently over his face, like they passed
over the rest of the world around her. And then those incredible
eyes came to rest once more on the man next to her. He returns
her gaze, impervious to anything beyond her presence.
They are young, beautiful, and happy.
The man leans against the column, thinking that soon they will
die.
Giorgio Faletti - I Kill
(giovedì 31 luglio 2008)
