Although there's no rigid dividing line, fans of the crime genre generally fall into two camps. There are those who prefer stories which, after titillating us with dark transgressions, end by restoring order — the show Law & Order is an aptly named example. And then there are those who prefer stories which, even after the mystery is solved, leave you swimming in the murk — think Chinatown. This is the male-dominated realm of noir.
While the noir sensibility can be found all over the globe — it's one of the key signatures of the modern — some countries have a particular knack for its moody blend of violence and bleakness. One of them is Italy, where corruption and world-worry cynicism are almost an ancient birthright. This patrimony has given us such present-day noir favorites as Massimo Carlotto, Carlo Lucarelli and Maurizio de Giovanni — all available in English from Europa Editions. I'd urge you to read them.
But you should also look back to the 1960s and read the writer these guys would acknowledge as the father of Italian noir. He's Giorgio Scerbanenco, who was born in Kiev in 1911, grew up in Rome and worked for decades as a journalist in Milan. Scerbanenco's lasting achievement is known as "The Milano Quartet," which does for that city some of what James Ellroy does for L.A. The first of these novels — A Private Venus — has just been released by Melville House in a crackling new translation by Howard Curtis. I read it in a single sitting.