The City of the Living by Nicol Lagioa
Italian non-fiction
Original title -La città dei vivi
Translator – Ann Goldstein
Source – review copy
I was sent this after I reviewed another true crime work from Europa Daniella wonder what my taker one this would be as it is very different from The missing word that Europa had all brought out. This is a work from one of the best current writers in Italy Nicola Lagioia had started out studying law but then became an editor and ghostwriter. He eventually published his first novel in 2001 this is his fifth novel I would have called it a non-fiction novel but it is about a violent crime where two young men tortured and killed another man on the outskirts on Rome the sheer violence of the crime and the people involved sent shockwaves through Rome what he does here is try to take apart the three lives at the centre of the crime.
MF: Let’s meet at 11.00 at my house? You’ll get the stuff? I’ll pay you back, obviously.
MP: I thought you’d take care of everything tonight. This time I can’t spend and the other time it was 7 or 8 hundred.
MF: O.K., but I can’t spend more than 150.
MP: Give me the address again.
MF: Via Igino Giordani 2. When you’re there call me.
WhatsApp exchange between Manuel Foffo and Marco Prato three days before the murder.
The message leading up to the crime between the two killers
Luca Varani was a mechanic but how he got involved and end up dead at the hands of these young men THEY had initially hired him as he was a male prostitute on the side and were going to rape him. But then events got w=twisted. But that all happens later in the book. This is a story that lifts the lid on modern culture the world of social media and how one appears online. It is about how we identify ourselves sexually these days in an ever changing world of views and how we live. The two killers are a successful events manager Manuel Boffo and his mate a uni dropout and maybe the most troubled character in this story, Marco Prato. Boffo is a straight male his friend is a crossdresser and bi but the book digs into the three characters’ life Luca the victim had been in a relationship and had this secret Whart he does is get to the heart of the families and friends of the three men and looks at what brought them to this horrific crime. How they are bent and twisted by class and the society they live in and how this act is like a sudden burst of pent-up violence built up over the years. He talks with one of the killers. this is how in one of the most beautiful cities in the world there is a darker side to those living there.
Crimes of this type, in which the accomplices hadn’t known each other for long, almost all followed the same outline. Not three, not five, not eight. Two was the recurring number. A dominator and a dominated. A manipulated and a manipulator, even if the roles were often interchangeable. It was a matter of individuals who, on their own, were unlikely to have committed the crime for which they ended up in jail almost without realizing it. We weren’t dealing with serial killers. In theory, they were normal people.
“But in the end what is the truth about Luca Varani’s private life? And Foffo’s and Prato’s?”
Yes the real lives of these three is at the heart of this book
Lagioia has hosted a podcast around this crime. This book it is a work of fiction as some parts he has painted in the gaps of what happened. But yes it is hard not to think of Truman Capote, but for me, there was a little bit of a writer like Irvine Welsh here in that darker side of life of being young in the modern world and the violence drugs and aggression that can bring the crime is shocking and the two men at the heart of it just don’t seem the sort to do this horrific killing and I think that is where the book is at it’s best as he goes into the characters the past story of the three. But also the darker underbelly of the city like a Dutch tourist looking for a child. I can see this crime making a great podcast as it is just asks much about the world of social media and image, sexual expression and identity this book is maybe the cream of that podcast taken of the top. I found it interesting and horrific to read but it also lifted the lid on a crime I hadn’t heard of a level of violence with two killers that brought back thoughts of the moors killers to me growing up in the north-west their ghost their crimes where still raw when I was a kid and this is another crime that shocks a city. Have you read this book or heard of this crime ?
Winston’s score – A , a shocking crime looked at in depth and picked apart to get to the heart of why but it becomes a blur of reasons.
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