The Deliverance of Evil

December 2, 2013
On the eve of Italy’s 1982 World Cup victory—the first of two national triumphs 24 years apart that bookend this commanding debut thriller, the first of a trilogy—Roman police commissario Michele Balistreri refuses to let the disappearance of ravishing 18-year-old Elisa Sordi, one of his best friend’s colleagues, derail plans for a night of drunken revelry. Days later, the discovery of Elisa’s tortured body on the banks of the Tiber will be but the start of a string of murders that, decades later, will endanger some of those closest to him—as well as the stability of the Italian government itself. Costantini spins a politically charged, Machiavellian tale of fiendish complexity that is longer and knottier than necessary. But the book’s underlying psychology—which, in an effort to explain the genesis of the kind of monstrous evil at the story’s heart, veers disturbingly close to blaming the victim—will likely be more problematic for some readers. Announced first printing of 150,000.

January 15, 2014
A long, complex crime novel that moves from savage murder to the political and social realities of contemporary Italy. Debut novelist Costantini's book appeared in his home country of Italy in 2011 under the title Tu sei il male ("You Are the Evil"), a somewhat more pointed statement than the "deliverance" of the English version. The evil is broadly distributed. Police captain Michele Balistreri is a young man who has no trouble betraying the neofascists whose cell he has infiltrated, even if he harbors a few neofascist sympathies himself. He's more interested in drinking, smoking and cutting a bella figura on the streets of Rome, and when, just after Italy wins the World Cup in 1982, a young woman turns up brutally murdered, he seems to regard it as an inconvenience. He takes his job infinitely more seriously when, a quarter-century later, Italy again returns to the championship and the bodies start popping up once more. Here, the story, already absorbing (though too long by 100 pages), picks up speed, even though Balistreri doesn't; he's world-weary to the point of exhaustion, cynical and dependent on antidepressants to get him through the day, but he's been suffering from guilt over his earlier callousness and is determined to get the investigation right this time. His inquiry takes him into some unlikely corners, from the Vatican to gypsy encampments, though he keeps circling back to suspicions he has been nursing for years. It helps to have a little knowledge of Italian politics to appreciate some of the subtleties of Costantini's story, as well as a nodding familiarity with the geography of Rome (and the fact, for instance, that the Hotel Hassler is the city's most elite). None of those things are necessary in order to understand the essential nastiness of the bad guy and the moral ambiguities of the supposedly good ones. A promising debut.

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October 15, 2013

May 1982. Italy has just won the World Cup. During the night of celebration, a young woman, the niece of the powerful Cardinal Alessandrini and neighbor to a monarchist senator, is murdered. The police captain in charge of the investigation, Michele Balistreri, is a brash womanizer who botches the case. Twenty-four years later, with Italy again on the brink of a World Cup victory, someone with ties to the victim has begun killing young women, marking each with a different letter of the alphabet. An older, chastened Balistreri leads his team of deputies as they try to solve a case that results in the deaths of nearly a dozen individuals and entwines Italian politics--particularly the issue of immigration--with human failings, especially the desire for vengeance. VERDICT A strong start, with an absorbing depiction of the arrogant Balistreri, leads by midpoint to a less than engaging muddle with far too many pawns on the board. Near the end, the disparate threads begin to take shape as a spider's web, but by then many readers may have abandoned the book. This first entry in a projected trilogy is recommended for those who don't mind keeping a chart of characters and who enjoy elaborate puzzles. [With a 150,000-copy first printing.]--Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 15, 2014
Bracketed by World Cup fever, initially in 1986 and then in 2006, this first in a highly anticipated trilogywinner of Italy's Scerbanenco Prize for best crime novelgets off to a rousing start with a long (perhaps too long) and highly complex tale of corruption that encompasses the Vatican, the police, and the Italian government. Michele Balistreri is a young commissario in 1986, more interested in carousing than in his job, when a beautiful young woman, Elisa Sordi, who works at the Vatican complex, is reported missing. Refusing to be distracted from watching the Cup final, Balistreri fails to respond quickly. Elisa's body is eventually found in the Tiber, and Balistreri's inability to capture the murderer stains his career. Nearly 20 years later, again on the eve of an Italian appearance in the World Cup final, Balistreri has rebounded, at least professionally, when Elisa's mother commits suicide, and a string of succeeding murders suggests a connection to the earlier crime. Throwing himself into the case as a way of seeking long-needed personal redemption, Balistreri becomes embroiled in a many-tentacled conspiracy whose connections to the powerful threaten to end his career once and for all. Costantini's byzantine plot seems impenetrable at times, but the compelling character of the antiheroic Balistreri, a former Fascist, holds it together, much as the powerful figure of Lisbeth Salander keeps Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy from capsizing during its more convoluted turns. Balistreri may not be quite as perversely appealing as Salander, but he is every bit as flawed and a lot more vulnerable, and the combination provides just the right engine to drive this lumbering but still compelling narrative. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: A 150,000 first printing and a matching marketing campaign will get this debut novel the attention it deserves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)