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WORK TITLE: Kill the Father
WORK NOTES: trans by Antony Shugaar
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 11/4/1964
WEBSITE: http://www.sandronedazieri.it/
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Italian
http://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Sandrone-Dazieri/554902109 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandrone_Dazieri
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born November 4, 1964, in Cremona, Italy; married; wife’s name Olga.
EDUCATION:Graduated from San Pellegrino Terme.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and screenwriter. Telepress editorial service, Milan, Italy, proofreader, then Milan branch general manager; Founder of Crime Noir (publishing house); chief editor of the crime series Gialli Mondadori, 2000-04; Mondadori Publishing House, literary consultant. Has worked various jobs, including as a freelance journalist and porter.
WRITINGS
Also author of the “Gorilla” series; author of dozens of screenplays.
SIDELIGHTS
Sandrone Dazieri is an Italian writer and screenwriter. Known for writing crime fiction mostly in Italian, he has written dozens of screenplays. Born in Cremona, Italy, in 1964, he worked a number of jobs across Italy before settling in Milan and starting work in the publishing industry. In the late 1990s, he initiated the popular “Gorilla” series, many of which were later turned into films and television movies.
In a Heartbeat
In 2012 Dazieri published the novel In a Heartbeat. Santo is a drug dealer-cum-highly successful advertising executive in Milan. After an argument with his business partner, he falls unconscious and wakes up in one of the toilets of La Scala. He suffers from amnesia of the past nearly two decades and must try to piece together what has happened to him over the years as he is no longer in the same position in life he had once held. His fiancé is very supportive of him when he is accused of murdering his boss, but he suspects that there is more to the story behind this accusation than he is aware of.
A contributor to the Our Book Reviews Online blog commented that “as all good thrillers are, In a Heartbeat is a page-turning addictive read–one where I felt very tempted to turn to the last page to check the ending.” In a reviewing at the Mystery Scene Web site, Betty Webb suggested that readers “can’t help but root for this charming rascal, too. In this humorous, ever-surprising read, we become his willing partners-in-crime as we follow him down Milan’s mean streets.” The writer of the Killing Time blog observed: “In a Heartbeat is … a very effective ‘what would you do?’ thriller. While often funny, the scariness of Santo’s situation is never lost and, while he doesn’t always make empathy easy, it is this that keeps the plot moving and the reader reading.”
Kill the Father
Dazieri published the novel Kill the Father in 2016. As a six-year-old child, Dante Torre was kidnapped and kept in a silo for eleven years before he managed to escape. He attempts to manage his extreme claustrophobia by living an overmedicated life removed from people as best as possible. Meanwhile, police Captain Colomba Caselli is forced onto administrative leave while recovering from major injuries and repeated debilitating panic attacks related to a terrorist attack. After a woman is murdered, her husband is charged for the crime, and their son goes missing, both Caselli and Torre are brought together to work on this case, which is all too familiar to Torre. Torre’s unorthodox approach and theories are largely rejected by senior police officials, leading him and Caselli to operate outside the normal parameters of the law.
In a review in Library Journal, Deb West stated: “A breakout hit in Europe, this captivating novel keeps readers guessing and on edge until the final page.” Booklist contributor Michele Leber asserted: “Don’t be surprised if Kill the Father becomes the next Big Thing in international crime fiction.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor called the book “dark treat for mystery buffs” that follows “a path well-worn by the likes of Stephen King and Stieg Larsson.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly advised that Kill the Father “is not an odyssey for the faint of heart” because it is “told in brutal, often wrenching detail.” The writer of the literary blog Debbish “really loved the characters Dazieri created.” Although noting that the pacing “slowed (even dragged) a little halfway through,” the same reviewer also remarked: “It was then (if felt like) a whole new plot emerged and it became something quite different from the psychological thriller I thought I was reading.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, November 1, 2016, Michele Leber, review of Kill the Father, p. 32.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2016, review of Kill the Father.
Library Journal, December 1, 2016, Deb West, review of Kill the Father, p. 82.
Publishers Weekly, October 10, 2016, review of Kill the Father, p. 56.
ONLINE
Debbish, http://www.debbish.com/ ( January 11, 2017), review of Kill the Father.
Killing Time, https://killingtimecrime.wordpress.com/ (December 2, 2012), review of In a Heartbeat.
Mystery Scene, http://mysteryscenemag.com/ (July 1, 2013), Betty Webb, review of In a Heartbeat.
Our Book Reviews Online, http://ourbookreviewsonline.blogspot.com/ (December 5, 2012), review of In a Heartbeat.
Sandrone Dazieri Website, https://sandronedazieri.com (June 26, 2017).
Simon and Schuster, http://www.simonandschuster.com/ (July 17, 2017), short profile.
Sandrone Dazieri is the bestselling author of eight novels and more than fifty screenplays. He was previously the founder of a small independent publishing house, Crime Noir. Kill the Father, the first in a series featuring Colomba Caselli and Dante Torre, is his first North American publication. The novel appeared on bestseller lists throughout Europe.
Sandrone Dazieri
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sandrone Dazieri
Sandrone Dazieri - Lucca Comics & Games 2016.jpg
Sandrone Dazieri at Lucca Comics & Games 2016
Born November 4, 1964 (age 52)[1]
Cremona, Italy
Occupation Author, Screenwriter
Nationality Italy Italian
Period 1900, 2000
Genre Crime fiction
Spouse Olga
Website
www.sandronedazieri.it
Sandrone Dazieri (born November 4, 1964[1]) is a popular Italian crime writer. His most famous work is the Gorilla series, an episode of which was also dramatized as a television film.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Notes
3 Bibliography
4 Screenwriting
5 External links
Biography
He was born in Cremona in 1964. He graduated at San Pellegrino Terme hotel-management school and worked as a cook for ten years, all around Italy. After having moved to Milan he started working in a number of jobs, from seller to porter, and played a very active role in the movement of Milan social centers.
In 1992 he got closer to publishing working as a proofreader for Telepress editorial service, and after five years he was appointed general manager of Milan branch. He also worked as a freelance journalist and collaborated with Manifesto as an expert of counterculture and genre fiction.
In 1999 he achieved his first popular success with the thriller Attenti al gorilla (Watch Out For The Gorilla), the first in a best-seller series, where the main character is a sort of doppelgänger of Dazieri himself, living the nightlife in Milan with all the ensuing troubles. Dazieri's books are renowned for the rocambolesque adventures in which Sandrone (the main character has the author's name too) is continuously involved, in an irrefrenable but never fatalistic destiny. It is in fact Sandrone's personality that always drives him to assist the weak and derelict, those who have lost all hope for help but for the Gorilla's saving hand. Among a thousand contradictions, he'll confront all sorts of dangers, in the best tradition of hardboiled thrillers, and aided by his alter ego called Socio (the rational side of Sandrone, in a split-personality condition), our hero will happily finalise and conclude many chilling and hair-raising situations.
He wrote two other noir novels (La cura del Gorilla Einaudi - Gorilla Blues Strade Blu Mondadori), a novel for kids (Disney Avventura), some scripts for comics (Pinocchio, Diabolik) and many short stories.
His last novels are: E' stato un attimo (Mondadori Strade Blu 2006, translated into English and published by Hersilia Press in 2012), Cemento Armato (ed.Mondadori 2007) and Bestie (VerdeNero edizioni ambiente 2007).
He is also a scriptwriter; among his films are La cura del Gorilla (from the same book) directed by Carlo A. Sigon and interpreted by Claudio Bisio, Un gioco da ragazze directed by Matteo Rovere and L'ultima Battuta, a TV movie.
With Italian film director Gabriele Salvatores and producer Maurizio Totti, Dazieri founded in 2004 the publishing house Colorado Noir.
From 2000 to 2004 he was also the chief editor of the crime series Gialli Mondadori (Mondadori Thrillers) and the catalogue for young readers Libri per Ragazzi Mondadori (Mondadori Books for Youth). He is currently a literary consultant to the Mondadori Publishing House.
Notes
Sandrone Dazieri on Internet Movie Database
Bibliography
Antologia cyberpunk (A Cyberpunk Anthology). 1994.
Sandrone Dazieri (ed.) Italia Overground. Mappe e reti della cultura alternativa (Italy Overground. Maps & Networks of the Alternative Culture). Rome, Castelvecchi, 1996. ISBN 88-86232-76-4.
Sandrone Dazieri. Attenti al gorilla (Watch Out For The Gorilla). Milano, Mondadori, 1999. ISBN 978-88-04-47328-2.
Sandrone Dazieri. La cura del Gorilla (The Gorilla Cure). Turin, Einaudi, 2001. ISBN 978-88-06-15699-2.
Sandrone Dazieri. Gorilla blues. Milan, Mondadori, 2002. ISBN 978-88-04-50989-9.
Sandrone Dazieri. Ciak si indaga. Walt Disney Italy, 2003 (book for teens). ISBN 978-88-522-0078-6.
Sandrone Dazieri. Il Karma del gorilla (The Gorilla's Karma). Milan, Mondadori, 2005. ISBN 978-88-04-52855-5.
Sandrone Dazieri & Daniele G. Genova. La città buia (The Dark City). Aliberti, 2006. ISBN 978-88-7424-123-1.
Sandrone Dazieri. È stato un attimo (It Was But A Moment). Milan, Mondadori, 2006. ISBN 978-88-04-55998-6.
Sandrone Dazieri. Bestie (Beasts). Milan, Edizioni Ambiente (environmental series VerdeNero), 2007. ISBN 978-88-89014-64-6.
Sandrone Dazieri & Marco Martani. Cemento Armato (Reinforced Concrete). Milan, Mondadori, 2007. ISBN 978-88-04-57380-7.
Niccolo Ammaniti, Sandrone Dazieri, et al.. Crimini (Crimes). London, Bitter Lemon Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-904738-26-8 (Collection of crime stories, in English).
Sandrone Dazieri. La Bellezza è un malinteso. Milan, Mondadori, 2010.
Screenwriting
La cura del Gorilla (The Gorilla Cure), directed by Carlo Arturo Sigon (2006)
L'ultima battuta (The Last Gag), TV movie for the series Crimini (Crimes) (2006)
Un gioco da ragazze (A Girls Play), directed by Matteo Rovere (2008)
La valle della paura (Valley of Fear), (filming 2008-2009)
Bestie (Beasts), TV movie (in pre-production, 2009)
Sandrone Dazieri was born in Cremona in 1964. After graduating from a hotel-management school in San Pellegrino Terme, Dazieri worked for ten years all across Italy as a cook. He settled in Milan and began working a variety of jobs, from seller to porter, and played a very active role in the movement of Milan social centers.
In 1992, Dazieri started a career in the publishing world as a proofreader for Telepress editorial service, and after five years he was appointed general manager of the Milan branch. He also worked as a freelance journalist and collaborated with Manifesto as an expert of counterculture and genre fiction.
In 1999, Dazieri rose to popularity with the success of his thriller Attenti al gorilla (Watch Out For The Gorilla), the first in a best-selling series where the main character is a sort of doppelgänger of Dazieri himself, living the nightlife in Milan with all the ensuing troubles. Dazieri’s books are renowned for the fantastic adventures in which Sandrone, the protagonist who shares Dazieri’s name, is continuously involved in an uncontrollable destiny. It is Sandrone’s personality that always drives him to assist the weak and derelict, those who have lost all hope for help but for the Gorilla’s saving hand. He confronts all sorts of dangers, in the best tradition of hardboiled thrillers. Aided by his alter ego, Socio, the rational split-personality of Sandrone, our hero combats chilling and hair-raising situations.
From 2000 to 2004, Dazieri was the chief editor of the crime series Gialli Mondadori (Mondadori Thrillers) and the catalogue for young readers, Libri per Ragazzi Mondadori (Mondadori Books for Youth). He is currently a literary consultant to the Mondadori Publishing House. He has written several other noir novels, such as La cura del Gorilla (Einaudi), Gorilla Blues (Strade Blu Mondadori), E’ stato un attimo (Mondadori Strade Blu 2006), Cemento Armato (ed.Mondadori 2007) and Bestie (VerdeNero edizioni ambiente 2007); a novel for kids (Disney Avventura), as well as some scripts for comics (Pinocchio, Diabolik) and many short stories.
Dazieri’s latest novel, Uccidi il Padre (Kill the Father) has been translated in 20 countries. The sequel, L’Angelo (The Killer’s Angel) is out in Italy and has already been sold to many countries.
Dazieri is also a screenwriter; among his films are La cura del Gorilla, directed by Carlo A. Sigon and interpreted by Claudio Bisio, and Un gioco da ragazze directed by Matteo Rovere and L’ultima Battuta, a TV movie. You can find his Imdb page here.
Married, a vegetarian, and a pacifist, Dazieri currently lives in Milano, Pergola (a small town in the Italian countryside), Moscow, and Rome.
Dazieri, Sandrone. Kill the Father
Deb West
141.20 (Dec. 1, 2016): p82.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
* Dazieri, Sandrone. Kill the Father. Scribner. Jan. 2017.512p. tr. from Italian by Anthony Shugaar. ISBN 9781501130731. $27; ebk. ISBN 9781501130755. F
Best-selling Italian author Dazieri makes his U.S. debut with this new thriller featuring two investigators who have suffered deep trauma, making it difficult for either of them to pursue a case or even trust other people. Capt. Colomba Caselli is on administrative leave following serious injuries in a horrific terrorist attack. Dante Torre was kidnapped when he was six years old and kept isolated in a concrete silo by "the father," who only gave him food and water if he was good. After 11 years Torre finally escaped and has since been trying to overcome his crippling claustrophobia by keeping his distance from people and taking a multitude of medications. Caselli and Torre are brought together when a woman is found murdered, her husband is accused of the crime, and the couple's six-year-old son goes missing. All of this sounds dangerously familiar to Torre; he is certain his old captor is back and is determined to find him before more children are harmed. VERDICT A breakout hit in Europe, this captivating novel keeps readers guessing and on edge until the final page. Fans of international crime novels will eagerly anticipate subsequent stories.--Deb West, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
West, Deb. "Dazieri, Sandrone. Kill the Father." Library Journal, 1 Dec. 2016, p. 82. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA472371161&it=r&asid=97b818d1e64e22f9320808873ac110d0. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A472371161
Kill the Father
Michele Leber
113.5 (Nov. 1, 2016): p32.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Kill the Father. By Sandrone Dazieri. Tr. by Antony Shugaar. Jan. 2017. 512p. Scribner, $27 (9781501147098); e-book, $12.99 (9781471154133).
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Two damaged individuals team up to uncover a horrific decades-old experiment in Italian author Dazieri's outstanding thriller. After a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome, and her six-year-old son vanishes, police deputy captain Colomba Caselli is tapped by her boss to work with Dante Torre, known as "the boy in the silo," to find the missing child. Caselli is still on leave nearly nine months after barely surviving a violent fiasco referred to as the Disaster, an event that still causes her to have debilitating panic attacks, and Torre, who was kidnapped as a boy and held captive for 11 years, is still severely claustrophobic decades later. But she remains a respected warrior of a police officer, and he has been successful in locating other kidnapped children, so they unite in searching for the Father, the man who captured Torre, whom Torre believes to be responsible for taking the currently missing boy. Authorities uniformly doubt Torre's thesis, so he and Caselli find themselves sometimes operating outside the boundaries of the law, as they put themselves in peril repeatedly. Police politics and military operations add to the complexity and interest of this unrelenting, adrenaline-fueled novel, with a final twist serving as a setup for a sequel. Don't be surprised if Kill the Father becomes the next Big Thing in international crime fiction.--Michele Leber
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Leber, Michele. "Kill the Father." Booklist, 1 Nov. 2016, p. 32. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471142826&it=r&asid=19e6a1dc4bd71b0a25710bc67914b213. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A471142826
Dazieri, Sandrone: KILL THE FATHER
(Nov. 1, 2016):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Dazieri, Sandrone KILL THE FATHER Scribner (Adult Fiction) $27.00 1, 1 ISBN: 978-1-5011-3073-1
Dear old dad is a bit of a psychopath, and it's up to a damaged dynamic duo to stop him from committing more mayhem.In this American debut by much-published Italian novelist and screenwriter Dazieri, two sleuths join forces in Rome and set about solving one of the nastier crimes in recent memory: a woman is decapitated, and her son is spirited away by a mysterious figure. All fingers point to an obvious suspect, but Dante Torre and Colomba Caselli know better. Colomba, herself "a woman warrior who rode stallions bareback and cut her enemies' heads off with a scimitar"--figuratively, that is--has been taking time off from the metro police force after one trauma-induced panic attack too many. Dante, for his part, has himself spent time in the custody of the sinister bad guy known as The Father, who once fancied himself an in loco parentis sort of surrogate but hasn't much been heard of since escaping from the law and has "been on the loose for thirty-five years committing all kinds of foul crimes." There are twists aplenty as Dante and Colomba track down The Father, even as he spins an ever finer trap for them: there's the chance that Dante wasn't the only kidnapped boy to have gotten away from his evil warden, and then there's the presence of a creepy German guy with a tattoo that, in a nice nod to historical amnesia and modern corporatism, "depicted a small blue bird that vaguely resembled the Twitter logo." Can Dante fend off his well-earned claustrophobia and Colomba her freakouts long enough to lasso Pops before he slips away to set up psycho shop in another country? Will we ever learn what motivates The Father to his unfatherly acts? It's worth sticking with Dazieri's yarn to find out, with a plotline as involved and involving as Jean-Christophe Grange's kindred whodunit The Crimson Rivers. Though following a path well-worn by the likes of Stephen King and Stieg Larsson, a dark treat for mystery buffs.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Dazieri, Sandrone: KILL THE FATHER." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2016. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468389016&it=r&asid=e7b56c6ed75280f9d4fa30f0a7037bc0. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468389016
Kill the Father
263.41 (Oct. 10, 2016): p56.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Kill the Father
Sandrone Dazieri, trans. from the Italian by Antony Shugaar. Scribner, $27 (512p) ISBN 978-1-5011-3073-1
Dazieri's dazzling U.S. debut, the first in a series, introduces Deputy Capt. Colomba Caselli, a Rome police detective recuperating from major work-related PTSD, and Dante Torre, a near-incapacitated claustrophobic private consultant on missing-person cases. Caselli, who's tough as nails but deeply injured by guilt over her role in a Paris bombing, is contemplating resigning from the police, but she feels she owes it to her boss to investigate the decapitation of a young mother and the disappearance of the woman's preteen son. Torre is drawn into the case because in his own youth he was held captive for years in a silo by an unknown captor he called Father. Torre and Colomba, both driven by rage and revenge, make a convoluted descent into an abyss of child abductions, gang-related crime, government cover-ups, and international terrorism. Told in brutal, often wrenching detail, this is not an odyssey for the faint of heart. Agent: Laura Grandi, Grandi e Associati (Italy). (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Kill the Father." Publishers Weekly, 10 Oct. 2016, p. 56+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466616147&it=r&asid=7262a90178ef7668be54bfe002d81e88. Accessed 1 June 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466616147
Book review: Kill the Father by Sandrone Dazieri
Wednesday, January 11, 2017 Permalink
It’s weird when a book becomes something you’re not expecting. I recently read a book that ventured into the mystical… and I wasn’t quite ready for it. This book by Sandrone Dazieri – the first UK release for the author of 8 novels and 50 screenplays – was good. Indeed, I demolished the first half in a sitting. But – it became something kinda different as Dazieri introduced elements that, well… while they may have made sense to many, were less of interest to me.
Book review: Kill the Father by Sandrone DazieriKill the Father
by Sandrone Dazieri
Published by Simon & Schuster UK
on January 4th 2017
Source: Simon & Schuster
Buy on Amazon
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Genres: Thriller / Suspense
ISBN: 9781471154119
Pages: 496
four-stars
Goodreads
When a woman is beheaded in a park outside Rome and her six-year-old son goes missing, the police unit assigned to the case sees an easy solution: they arrest the woman’s husband and await his confession.
But the Chief of Rome’s Major Crimes unit doubts things are so simple. Secretly, he lures to the case two of Italy’s top analytical minds: Deputy Captain Colomba Caselli, a fierce, warrior-like detective still reeling from having survived a bloody catastrophe, and Dante Torre, a man who spent his childhood trapped inside a concrete silo.
Fed through the gloved hand of a masked kidnapper who called himself “The Father,” Dante emerged from his ordeal with crippling claustrophobia but, also, with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and hyper-observant capacities.
All evidence suggests that the Father is back and active after being dormant for decades. Indeed, he has left tell-tale signs that signal he’s looking forward to a reunion with Dante. But when Columba and Dante begin following the ever-more-bizarre trail of clues, they grasp that what’s really going on is darker than they ever imagined.
The book kicks off with some political game-playing between different levels of police services. I’ve mentioned before I get confused re other countries and their law enforcement systems, but in this case it didn’t really matter. It is however, important to understand that Colomba is brought in by her boss… even though she’s still recovering from an incident we learn about later. And it’s Colomba’s boss who points her in the direction of Dante, the prickly pair developing an unlikely partnership; two fragile and damaged souls working together to find a sadistic killer. Kinda.
Italian law enforcement-politics aside, much of the early novel introduces us to our two leads, and their backstories are cleverly eked out. Initially I thought there may have been previous books in the series, but that’s not the case (indeed, this is billed as the first in a new series) and Dazieri provides us with everything we need to know.
I was interested to read in Dazieri’s bio that he’s worked on a lot of screenplays, as there’s something very visual about this book. It’d translate well onto screen and it will be interesting to see if that happens at some point.
Because I’m a lover of books about psychopathic killers (!!!) I was intrigued by The Father and Dante’s assertion that his captor was back. I was also ‘captivated’ by The Father’s motives for taking these boys and holding them for so long. Snippets of Dante’s memories and the occasional glimpse into The Father’s mind give us some insight but I was eager to understand the psychology behind his actions and why 6yr old Dante was selected and held for 11 years before his escape.
And this is where – sadly – things went a little awry for me. The book slowed (even dragged) a little halfway through and I found it easier than I should have to put it aside (given my enthusiasm for the first half). It was then (if felt like) a whole new plot emerged and it became something quite different from the psychological thriller I thought I was reading. I can’t say too much about it, but – peripherally anyway – we start to deal with a different sort of evil.
That’s not to say it wasn’t enjoyable and wouldn’t appeal to many. In fact, I think most would prefer it to the more macabre psychopathic predilections of a madman, but… for me it was unexpected and added a complexity (and whole new plot) that wasn’t necessary as well as a few too many coincidences.
However, I really loved the characters Dazieri created. Colomba arrived fully formed – which is why I assumed this wasn’t her first time on the page, but the backstory we get gives us the context we need. And Dante – with his foibles and baggage – is likeable and sympathetic.
I gather this isn’t a translation and it’s well-written. There is an occasional phrase which seems a bit awkward or overly formal (the additional inclusion of someone’s name where it’s not needed for example) – which could be a cultural thing… the way in which others communicate, or could just have been missed by an editor. The novel’s pretty long, at nearly 500 pages, so could probably be tightened a little.
As I said, I note this will be the first in a series and I’ll definitely go back for more as I’m keen to know what happens to our unlikely duo.
Kill the Father by Sandrone Dazieri was published in Australia by Simon & Schuster and is now available.
I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review purposes.
Wednesday, 5 December 2012
In A Heartbeat by Sandrone Dazieri
review by Maryom
Santo Denti is knocked unconscious by his ex-business partner, fellow drug-dealer, Max and wakes him to find himself bizarrely not at home where their argument took place but in the toilets of la Scala opera house just as a performance is about to start. Slowly putting the pieces together he discovers a 14 year gap in his memory, that somehow from being a small time drug-dealer he's become a highly paid advertising executive with a successful international ad agency and that he has an even richer girlfriend, daughter of one of the company directors. This new world isn't all riches and success though; a fellow director has been found murdered - and Santo is top of the suspects list!
The set-up of In A Heartbeat isn't entirely new - there have after all been numerous books and films in which someone is accused of a crime, generally murder, and has no recollection of the period in which the crime supposedly took place. The difference here though is that instead of losing a few hours or maybe a couple of days, the hero has lost 14 years of memory. The world he wakes up in is so very different to the one he remembers - the city he grew up in has changed totally; he's missed the introduction of mobile phones, the growth of the internet and even Terminator3!
As all good thrillers are, In A Heartbeat is a page-turning addictive read - one where I felt very tempted to turn to the last page to check the ending. Despite the uncovering of the shady side of Milan - both at street drug-dealer and corporate board room level - the story is told with the quirky humour that I've found in TV's Inspector Montalbano. The only down side was that I didn't find Santo Denti himself to be a very likeable person - this could of course have been deliberate on behalf of the author but even so I'd rather have a lead character I sympathised with.
Maryom's review - 4 stars
Books
In a Heartbeat
by Sandrone Dazieri
Hersilia Press, July 2013, $15.95
dazieri_inaheartbeat
Buy at Amazon
Shop at Indie Bound
Sandrone Dazieri’s In a Heartbeat takes a popular suspense subgenre and turns it on its head: a man wakes up and can’t remember who he is. Almost always, these amnesia-driven novels feature a likable protagonist who struggles valiantly against murder charges, while at the same time, repairing the damage memory loss has done to his personal relationships. Nice, but that’s not what happens here. Santo Trafficante, our amnesiac, is not valiant. He’s not even decent. He’s a low-life drug dealer in Milan, Italy, and when he wakes up in a toilet, his first thought is to get even with the equally sleazy business associate who cheated him in a drug deal. But soon Santo discovers that he’s woken up a full 14 years after that ill-fated drug deal. The good news is that he’s now a highly successful advertising executive; the bad news is that he’s fat. And he’s still a sleaze. As he tries to bluff his way through his cushy new life, his bad habits (wine, women, song, drugs, larceny, etc.) come back to haunt him. Yet the villainous Santo remains strangely compelling. He may be accused of murdering his boss at the ad agency—he can’t remember if he did or not—and he might have packed on a few pounds during those missing 14 years, but his upper-crust fiancée remains fiercely loyal, as do several other women in his lusty life. The reader can’t help but root for this charming rascal, too. In this humorous, ever-surprising read, we become his willing partners-in-crime as we follow him down Milan’s mean streets and into his ad agency’s flashy boardroom. No matter what crimes he commits in either place, Santo remains our main man.
Betty Webb
In a Heartbeat by Sandrone Dazieri – Review
December 2, 2012 / Gareth
In a Heartbeat by Sandrone Dazieri
Trans. A. Turner Mojica
(Hersilia Press, 2012)
Santo is a successful manager who has built his fortune on a mixture of personal ruthlessness and political skill, but when he wakes up in the toilets of La Scala after being electrocuted by a faulty light switch he doesn’t remember any of it. His memory of the previous fourteen years of his life has disappeared and he can only remember the time when he was a twenty-year-old cocaine dealer. He doesn’t know how and when his life changed, but now he has lots of money, a luxury house and a brand new sports car. Now someone is trying to kill him, and the police are accusing him of murder.
Sandrone Dazieri, a popular crime writer in Italy, has taken an interesting premise and created a surprising, quirky thriller. The opening, in which Santo awakes and very gradually comes to realise what’s happened to him (although by no means all of it), is funny and gripping in equal measure, setting the tone for the rest of the novel.
Santo wakes in the future, in, as far as he’s concerned, another man’s body, and is thrust into that other man’s life. He has a girlfriend who, as far as he’s concerned, he’s never met. In keeping with the character of his twenty year-old self, he initially treats this as a bonus, as if he’s simply taken over from someone else: “The Ad Exec had worked his ass off, and now I was here to enjoy the spoils”, ignoring the fact that it was he who achieved all this. But after a while Santo drops the breezy tough-guy act and allows himself a moment of reflection:
“I looked at myself. I saw a fat guy dressed in gay pyjamas. I had not much hair, cut short, grey at the temples with a hint of a beard that was completely white. I had deep wrinkes on my forehead and bags under my eyes. I didn’t have the hoop earring in my right ear anymore. I’d worn it since I was seventeen, trying to look cool like Corto Maltese. The hole was scarred and closed. I rolled up the pyjama shirt. My stomach was soft and swollen with white bellybutton hair. I was wrinkled, flabby and ugly.”
It’s touches like this which give some genuine drama and emotion to what could easily be an unbelievable plot.
The ‘time-travel’ element of the story is handled well. Dazieri obviously spent a lot of time thinking about what elements of modern life would seem odd or surprising to someone from the past (computers, Euros, Smart Cars, laser eye surgery) and addresses them in amusing and well-observed ways (“The future wasn’t Asimov’s future with fun robots; it was Blade Runner without the replicants.”) It’s also strange for us to think quite how much has changed in just fourteen years. Santo discovers the Internet and, after a crash course in how to use it, spends a long time catching up on history. The narrative is peppered with by turns funny or poignant summations such as “Learn: September 11th. Learn: Peace Mission. Learn: Al-Qaeda.”
In a Heartbeat is also a very effective ‘what would you do?’ thriller. While often funny, the scariness of Santo’s situation is never lost and, while he doesn’t always make empathy easy, it is this that keeps the plot moving and the reader reading.
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In a Heartbeat is released on 13 December as a paperback and eBook.