Mitchell Rose and the Bologna Massacre is a crime story that explores the last fifty years of cross-fertilisation between the Italian criminal underworld, its secret services, politics and the judicial system.When Mitchell Rose is called to Milan by Remo Rhimare, a local judge who wants him to investigate the Bologna bombing of 1980, he knows it would make more sense to turn the job down.To make things even more complicated, Rhimare also wants Rose to rein in his errant daughter, who is becoming increasingly wayward.As Rose begins to investigate, the two missions surprisingly become one, culminating in a dreadful dramatic climax.
ADVANTAGES
I have always written,
and what I have written in the past has been largely poetry, short stories, and
surreal high-flown fiction. This time I decided I was going to write something
much more linear that followed the rules of a genre. I was going to write crime
fiction and see exactly what I was able to produce.
In 2019, I was
teaching a group of judges and ex-judges in Bologna. It was a state-sponsored
course that certain Italian institutions organize for certain privileged social
groups, and during those lessons, we started to talk about the Bologna massacre
of 1980. That year, there was a terrorist bombing of Bologna Centrale railway
station, which killed 85 people and injured over 200. It was Italy’s most
serious terrorist attack. Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist
organization Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were
subsequently sentenced for the bombing.
I guess I had the
seeds of a story and the need to write something more disciplined that kept to
some sort of rules. All I was missing was a genre. There is something about
crime writing that pulls the reader forward, encourages him to move on. You are
leaving clues that will be picked up later as you move ahead, but essentially,
the style is linear. The “whodunnit” offers an immediate will to discovery.
Writing is the same. As you advance, you are constantly discovering new angles
on the way language moves, new stuff about yourself, your own freedom, and your
own limitations.
In this sense, the
advantage was that it gave me discipline and a framework in which to work.
Moreover, it’s a genre
that most people understand, and I have found that amongst my friends and
readers, they are quite willing to read a crime novel, whereas something a
little more prosaic arouses more suspicion.
DISADVANTAGES
I suppose the
disadvantage is the same as the advantage. This discipline that I was
instilling in myself meant that I could not write the way I had been writing up
to that point. I had to rein in my poetic excesses and stick to the rules. In
this, my editor was very helpful in pointing out my endless reiteration and
overuse of metaphor and simile.
I have also been told
that it is a very crowded genre, and it’s therefore difficult to make a name
for oneself. There are literally hundreds of crime writers publishing every
month, and it’s difficult to be heard over all the noise. I guess only time
will tell if the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
.png)
.jpeg)
.png)
.png)
