The summer of 1992 had been exceptionally cold in southern Italy. But
that's not the reason why it is still remembered.
On May 23, 1992, a roadside explosion killed the Palermo judge Giovanni
Falcone, his wife and three police officers. A few weeks later judge
Paolo Borsellino and five police officers were killed in the center of
Palermo. These anti-mafia judges became heroes but the violence spread
to the region of Bari in Puglia, where we meet a new, memorable
character, Maresciallo Pietro Fenoglio, an officer of the Italian
Carabinieri. Fenoglio, recently abandoned by his wife, must
simultaneously deal with his personal crisis and the new gang wars
raging around Bari. The police are stymied until a gang member, accused
of killing a child, decides to collaborate, revealing the inner workings
and the rules governing organised crime in the area.
The story is narrated through the actual testimony of the informant, a
trope reminiscent of verbatim theatre which Carofiglio, an ex-anti-mafia
judge himself, uses to great effect. The gangs are stopped but the
mystery of the boy's murder must still be solved, leading Fenoglio into
a world of deep moral ambiguity, where the prosecutors are hard to
distinguish from the prosecuted.
