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The Last Days of Il Duce
Domenic Stansberry's award-winning novel tells the story of Niccolo Jones, a broken-down man plagued by his obsession with his brother Joe's ex-wife Marie. Set in the old Italian neighborhood of North Beach in San Francisco, the novel flashes back and forth between their childhood days in the 1950s and events thirty years later. The kids are adults now, and everything has changed.
Nick's story begins when Joe is murdered, igniting in Nick an unquechable desire for revenge. The crime also awakens Nick's memories of days gone by, particularily his own illicit feelings for Marie. But the price of passion is as costly now as it was for Nick thirty years ago; for The Last Days of Il Duce is as much about the secrets of the past as it is about the sins of the present.
Nick's story begins when Joe is murdered, igniting in Nick an unquechable desire for revenge. The crime also awakens Nick's memories of days gone by, particularily his own illicit feelings for Marie. But the price of passion is as costly now as it was for Nick thirty years ago; for The Last Days of Il Duce is as much about the secrets of the past as it is about the sins of the present.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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About the author
Domenic Stansberry
24 books43 followersDomenic Stansberry is an Edgar Award winning novelist known for his dark, innovative crime novels. His latest novel, The White Devil, tells the story of a young American woman in Rome, an aspiring actress, who— together with her too charming brother— is implicated in a series of crimes dating back to her childhood days in Texas. Stansberry is also the author of the North Beach Mystery Series, which has won wide praise for its portrayal of the ethnic and political subcultures of San Francisco. Books from the series include The Ancient Rain, named several years after its original publication as one of the best crime novels of the decade by Booklist.
An earlier novel, The Confession, received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for its portrayal of a Marin County psychologist accused of murdering his mistress.
Stansberry grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in a small town north of that city with his wife, the poet Gillian Conoley, and their daughter Gillis.
An earlier novel, The Confession, received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for its portrayal of a Marin County psychologist accused of murdering his mistress.
Stansberry grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and currently lives in a small town north of that city with his wife, the poet Gillian Conoley, and their daughter Gillis.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 9, 2008
In The Last Days of Il Duce, Nick begins his noir tale of doom from jail. “Three people I used to know are dead,” Nick tells us. “Two of them I loved…” (5). Like Oedipus, Nick’s caught in the world’s desire to doom him, to make him a partner in crimes, and the role he’s being asked to play lies beyond his capacity to comprehend it.
It's literary noir at its finest. Nick’s conflict with Fate elevates not only Nick’s status, but the story itself. It gains a mythic sense, a sense that, although this is the way the world had to be, Nick did his part. And he did it heroically. And, in doing so, the world became his and his alone.
It's literary noir at its finest. Nick’s conflict with Fate elevates not only Nick’s status, but the story itself. It gains a mythic sense, a sense that, although this is the way the world had to be, Nick did his part. And he did it heroically. And, in doing so, the world became his and his alone.
December 3, 2016
Character driven noir, first person narrator. Knew the ending about 3/4 of the way through, but this fits the narrator knowing how it is all going to wind up. Dark, depressing setting, relationships mix pleasure with a dreadful foreboding. This is a must-read for any noir fan or someone looking for a top shelf, character centered novel.
July 17, 2009
This noir kept me reading late into the night. That doesn't happen much. I liked the setting in San Francisco's North Beach. Mr. Stansberry blends history (Mussolini, etc.) with his noirish storyline just the way I prefer it while keeping all the expected dark twists.
October 5, 2024
The Last Days of Il Duce by Domenic Stansberry stands out for me as something a bit different… call it ethnic-historic noir at its best. Ok, nothing new about Italians as central characters to bad guys crime stories, but this book deals not with the mob and wise guys, but in the Italian mean streets of San Francisco, and in the family, and neighborhood, the passions of boy on girl, compulsive and obsessive- doomed to failure.
Our hero, a deadbeat lawyer, involved with the local Chinese slumlord-developer and fronting for the eviction of tenants… Italian, Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Cambodian… to make his daily bread. Finds his life interrupted by the murder of his brother, reemergence into his past…his childhood, 1st love Mary, parental deceit, and the haunting voices of the old people speaking of the past, the last days of Il Duce and young mistress…
The voices of the old ones, the images of the past and present surround and direct the narrator throughout the story, and inescapable to the conclusion. Stansberry brings alive the torments, passions and inner unrest of the narrator, but moreover for this reader the environment of the neighborhood and teeming ethnicity of San Francisco, emerging postwar, and the intertwining of business, political and criminal machinery to control both neighborhoods development and displacement. Stansberry renders the scenery wonderfully.
Last time with brother. “Joe handed me the joint and I took another hit and the sky seemed suffused with both beauty and danger. Dolores Park is in the shadow of the city’s biggest hill so the fog rolls to either side and overhead there is that clear and startling blue. The sky today was calm in an ancient, dreamy way but I could feel too the violence in that dreaminess.” Surroundings. “young gangbangers postured up and down Mission Street. Meanwhile, the sisters and mothers of these boys wandered through the zapaterías and grocerías, the streets boomed with the staccato rapping of the lowrider’s radios, the sidewalks blossomed with color, the stench of overripe fruit, perfume, urine and feces, cinnamon rolls in outdoor booths where a little boy held a toy gun in one hand and with the other clutched at his mama’s skirts, hiding himself in her giant haunches.”
Later. “I wandered the late-nights with the Chinks and the hobos and the too-drunk tourists, all the nobodies of Columbus Avenue. Hunching under the neon light, they had learned the true secret of life, it seemed to me, and I wanted to be like them, wise as hell, immune from all desire.”
Joe -Positive ID. “features were slack, lips pale, face drained of color, a short stubble on the cheeks. The man lying there didn’t look any way Joe had ever looked when he was alive, but it was still him, his bones and his face.”
Visit to Luisa, Joe’s wife. “Light did not penetrate to the end of that hall. There was a little concrete yard in the rear where some bougainvillea grew, and beyond this was a cyclone fence strung with concertina wire to keep out the crackheads who lived in the house behind. A radio blasted a Mexican polka two doors down, some kids wailed, and the evening carried with it the smell of night jasmine and cooking grease.”
Leaving the city. “Out in the valley of walnuts and cottonwoods and dried grass where the immigrants speak in a thousand tongues, building cities out of materials too vile and wonderful to imagine. I wished I could disappear into that other world too, but the magic hour for people like me had long passed.”
Jumping ahead towards the ending. “His chest swelled out. He went on, telling his story in the curious way old Italians have, referring to people not by their names, but by their place within the family. Father. Daughter. Lover. The Forgotten One. Throughout it all, he went on gesturing, operatic, as if he stood on a balcony raised above a stage.”
The narrator’s place in the family…inescapable, tragic… another Italian opera. Bravo.
Our hero, a deadbeat lawyer, involved with the local Chinese slumlord-developer and fronting for the eviction of tenants… Italian, Chinese, Mexican, Vietnamese, Cambodian… to make his daily bread. Finds his life interrupted by the murder of his brother, reemergence into his past…his childhood, 1st love Mary, parental deceit, and the haunting voices of the old people speaking of the past, the last days of Il Duce and young mistress…
The voices of the old ones, the images of the past and present surround and direct the narrator throughout the story, and inescapable to the conclusion. Stansberry brings alive the torments, passions and inner unrest of the narrator, but moreover for this reader the environment of the neighborhood and teeming ethnicity of San Francisco, emerging postwar, and the intertwining of business, political and criminal machinery to control both neighborhoods development and displacement. Stansberry renders the scenery wonderfully.
Last time with brother. “Joe handed me the joint and I took another hit and the sky seemed suffused with both beauty and danger. Dolores Park is in the shadow of the city’s biggest hill so the fog rolls to either side and overhead there is that clear and startling blue. The sky today was calm in an ancient, dreamy way but I could feel too the violence in that dreaminess.” Surroundings. “young gangbangers postured up and down Mission Street. Meanwhile, the sisters and mothers of these boys wandered through the zapaterías and grocerías, the streets boomed with the staccato rapping of the lowrider’s radios, the sidewalks blossomed with color, the stench of overripe fruit, perfume, urine and feces, cinnamon rolls in outdoor booths where a little boy held a toy gun in one hand and with the other clutched at his mama’s skirts, hiding himself in her giant haunches.”
Later. “I wandered the late-nights with the Chinks and the hobos and the too-drunk tourists, all the nobodies of Columbus Avenue. Hunching under the neon light, they had learned the true secret of life, it seemed to me, and I wanted to be like them, wise as hell, immune from all desire.”
Joe -Positive ID. “features were slack, lips pale, face drained of color, a short stubble on the cheeks. The man lying there didn’t look any way Joe had ever looked when he was alive, but it was still him, his bones and his face.”
Visit to Luisa, Joe’s wife. “Light did not penetrate to the end of that hall. There was a little concrete yard in the rear where some bougainvillea grew, and beyond this was a cyclone fence strung with concertina wire to keep out the crackheads who lived in the house behind. A radio blasted a Mexican polka two doors down, some kids wailed, and the evening carried with it the smell of night jasmine and cooking grease.”
Leaving the city. “Out in the valley of walnuts and cottonwoods and dried grass where the immigrants speak in a thousand tongues, building cities out of materials too vile and wonderful to imagine. I wished I could disappear into that other world too, but the magic hour for people like me had long passed.”
Jumping ahead towards the ending. “His chest swelled out. He went on, telling his story in the curious way old Italians have, referring to people not by their names, but by their place within the family. Father. Daughter. Lover. The Forgotten One. Throughout it all, he went on gesturing, operatic, as if he stood on a balcony raised above a stage.”
The narrator’s place in the family…inescapable, tragic… another Italian opera. Bravo.
February 17, 2016
***1/2
A little sloppy in sections, yet very creative and deep in guilt-tripped 2nd generation American lore.
A little sloppy in sections, yet very creative and deep in guilt-tripped 2nd generation American lore.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews