Janet E. (janete) - , reviewed on 3/27/2011 + 22 more book reviews

In this short masterpiece, Sicilian writer Leonardo Sciascia uses the convention of the detective story to expose a web of entrenched connections between the mafia and politics, religion, the law and society. Curiosity and a perverse need to be something of a know it all leads Professor Laurana to follow the thread of a clue to a double murder in his small town. This lonely, sexually repressed bachelor is an odd man out : an intellectual long on book learning and short on street smarts, who reads Voltaire but isnt always able to read the faces and motives of his friends and acquaintances. This is a brilliantly written story of nasty, brutish behavior with some memorably funny passages mixed in. Reader warning: the introduction has a spoiler, so you may want to read it as an afterword.

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