This is a bleak yet multi-layered story set in northern Italy with a strong historical element and featuring a weary lead protagonist who closer resembles Wallander than Montalbano
.Born in 1971, Davide Longo is a award winning author, documentary maker and teacher of Creative Writing at the Scuola Holden in Turin. His avid readers have had to learn to be patient. Firstly there is no rush to flood the market with his stories. Young Beasts At Play is the third of his novels to be published in the English language. This follows a standalone novel published in 2012 before Barmard's Case, the first in his series focusing on Turino based Commissario Vincenzo Arcadipane, appearing in 2016. Patience is also required in terms of the storyline which is far from rushed. Instead the story emerges in a steady and revealing way as Arcadipane meanders with the truth as he engages with a multitude of characters.
While the cover of Young Beasts At Play features a quote from esteemed Italian author, director and performer Alexandro Barricco proclaiming Longo as “Northern Italy’s answer to Montalbano” in many ways it is at the other side of the crime fiction spectrum focusing on the darker side of the country and its peoples' characteristics.
None of these observations though are intended to dissuade you from reading Young Beasts At Play. In fact this is a story that I thoroughly enjoyed reading and would highly recommend. As a keen reader of novels from different locations I relished reading about some of the historical and political aspects of this story.
“In the background the mountains and the sky seem as if made from some identical substance: melancholy, inert, suffocating, nostalgic, passive and moribund. “Bloody Hell he thinks, “Here we go again... “ He becomes newly aware of the cold, of the acidity of the coffee he drank half an hour earlier at a motorway snack bar, and of the reason he is now here.”
The overworked and jaded Arcadipane is called out of the city when a mass grave of a dozen bodies are found in countryside during excavations for a new building. The logical assumption is that this is an atrocity dating back to the second world war and an investigating team who specialise in war casualties is brought in from Milan. Arcadipane is relieved to hand over the case but has his doubts having located a more modern item of clothing at the site. While he is keen to make it disappear, it then transpires that one of the men had received an operation which could have only taken place since then 1970s. Very reluctantly he realises he has to take on the case.
“Thirty years of murders, inquests, competitions, retirements, colleagues, heaps of paper, new arrivals, changes of office, false tracks, reports, sentences, delusions, children, the occasions commendation, trails, bouts of bronchitis, newspaper articles, antacids, impressions, blowouts, disciplinary reports, autopsies, interceptions, political quarrels and endless, sleepy, opiate hours of waiting when there’s absolutely fxxk all you can do except wait.”
While Arcadipane feels out of his depth at work, he is also feeling overwhelmed with family life as his wife Mariangela feels neglected and unsatisfied while their children Loredana and Giovanni demand more of his attention to little avail. With a dependency on sucai lozenges and cigarettes Arcadipane feels a regular need to weep, is unable to sleep or perform other bedroom activities. He re-enounters Isa, a young police officer whose career has been overshadowed with disciplinary issues but Arcadipane recognises something in the determination of his fellow outsider. Still grieving the unknown death of her father, Isa begins to assist him as she begin to follow the one clue that is available to them to identify the victims - the operation carried out on the leg of one of the men. Heavily signposted is the influence of retired inspector Corso Bramard on Arcadipane. When the identity of the body is limited to a political dissident, he contacts his own mentor for advice. The contrast between the two men is huge, full demonstrating how Bramard’s life has changed since taking retirement. He is fully focussed on his family yet still mentally sharp and a more open attitude to others. Together the three characters work together to find the truth behind the fate of the deceased dozen.
The beasts at play were idealistic young men and women with bourgeois backgrounds who were inspired both by left wing movements elsewhere and the partisan fight against fascism. They faced the derision of police officers who believed themselves to be more accurate representations of the proletariat. Yet as the story reveals towards its conclusion some individuals were more attached to the causes that they attached themselves to than others.
While there are some heartless people in this story, Vincenzo Arcadipane is actually not one of them. He feels a hostility to many people that he meets, thinks negatively of other nationalities such as French and Spanish, holds misogynist attitudes towards women whose particular bodies he describes in detail, and disparagingly speaks of other men – despite as we learn him being no handsome man himself. However he does gain sympathy, partly through moments of humour. His unexpected success at finding his own canine equivalent, his desire to overcome his physical problem and the observations of him shown through the eyes of Ivy and Corso such as his feeble attempts to swim.
While there are some aspects of this story that many appear unfamiliar from those without an Italian background, through Silvester Mazzarella’s translation it makes these events appear quite understandable. Overall I found Young Beasts At Play a very rewarding book to read. It is occasionally sentimental, occasionally complex with a plot which is as though provoking as it is absorbing. Whether like me you have just discovered Davide Longo or whether you waited several years for this book, it is definitely a book that will last long in the memory. While hopefully the Montalbano sticker attracts some interest, Longo definitely stands on his own merits and I hope we see more of his work, including the third in the series, translated into English