The young man murmurs: Maestro, thank you. Thank you for this story, thank you for this song.
The old man chuckles and says: It’s not mine, the song. And neither is the story. I just told it to you.
He reclines against the backrest and shuts his eyes. The young man gets up and heads for the door. Just as he’s about to open it, he hears the old man’s voice coming to him out of the darkness, and it’s little more than a whisper.
Next time we’ll talk about jealousy. Of how it rends your flesh and plunges its fingers into your body.
Of the torment of an ancient love affair.
The old man closes his eyes.
And smiling he begins to dream.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Ricciardi’s world has many creators; he himself, without the attention of Francesco Pinto and the affection of Aldo Putignano, could never have existed.
The city, the things, and the air around him are all reconstructed and arranged by the gentle and cunning hand of Annamaria Torroncelli. His family and the people that surround him are profoundly familiar to the eyes of Stefania Negro. His investigations, simple and contorted like life itself, spring from conversations with Antonio Formicola. The dead people that he sees in their macabre dance come from the words of Giulio Di Mizio. My infinite thanks go to these people, without whom I’d never be able to imagine my green-eyed commissario.
This story in particular has the aromas of the foods imagined by Sabrina Prisco of the Osteria Canali in Salerno and Giovanni Serritelli, the Cuoco Galante of Naples. It takes into account the criminal procedure reconstructed by Titti Perna. It pierces the victim’s throat in accordance with the path defined by Roberto de Giovanni. It unrolls in the accommodating, magical fantasies of Severino Cesari and Francesco Colombo and in the delicate attention of Daniela La Rosa.
But it is born in my heart, it grows without encountering pauses, and ends without ending, accompanied by the sentiment and the smile of she who is its author much more than I am: my sweetest Paola.
NOTE
The verses in the Prologue, Chapter XXII and Chapter XXXVII are taken from the song “Palomma ’e notte” by Salvatore Di Giacomo and Francesco Buongiovanni (1906).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maurizio de Giovanni’s Commissario Ricciardi series is a bestselling crime fiction series in Italy and abroad. De Giovanni is also the author of the contemporary Neapolitan thriller, The Crocodile, and the new contemporary Neapolitan noir series, The Bastards of Pizzofalcone. He lives in Naples with his family.
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