Methods of Murder: Beccarian Introspection and Lombrosian Vivisection in Italian Crime Fiction by Elena Past (review)

Italian crime fiction developed late compared with what happened in other European countries. Since its origins, it has been at the centre of heated debates about its literary value, its ideological significance, and its very existence on the Italian Peninsula. After many decades of widespread academic snobbery, the Italian output has increasingly been acknowledged for its linguistic experimentalism, its geographical relevance, and its social and political value. By arguing that “crime fiction has been part of a national discussion about culture and politics and has reflected Italian attitudes towards crime,” this book crosses an increasingly popular literary form with a new reading of Cesare Beccaria’s and Cesare Lombroso’s highly influential theories on crime, criminals, and punishment.

The volume is divided into two parts. Part 1, “Beccarian Introspection,” focuses on the works of Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri, and Gianrico Carofiglio. In the chapter dedicated to Sciascia, Elena Past convincingly argues that instead of embracing an unproblematic belief in the secolo dei lumi in his crime stories, the Sicilian writer, like Beccaria, highlights a number of complications inherent in the Enlightenment, especially in the conflict between power and reason. Thus, in the author’s words, the detective framework becomes “a complicated meditation on power, ideology, law, and the might of the intellect” in a world where “Reason, or Grace, routinely fails to counteract power.” In a less convincing chapter devoted to Camilleri, Past explains that by “provocatively staging the triumph of reason” on the island, this writer’s works “created a simulated Sicily that strategically avoids being weighed down by the island’s socio-political problems.” According to the author, the serial form of Camilleri’s works is a particularly suitable means of supporting a myth of the reliability of reason. However, it may otherwise be argued that the “absent Sicily of Leonardo Sciascia” in Camilleri’s novels is not merely a way of providing more optimistic and therefore commercially viable crime stories. Indeed, it can rather be seen as a conscious political choice on the author’s part to depict an evolving Sicily where the Mafia and crime in general can be defeated. The analysis of Carofiglio’s novels reveals that this crime author engages a Beccarian meditation on the role of the justice system and its impact on individuals. According to Past, Carofiglio’s attorney-protagonist successfully uses pragmatic strategies to “distance his clients from the judicial system and from the violence that seems to be an inherent part of it.” In this chapter, Past implicitly suggests that the serial format and the positive resolutions of the stories in Carofiglio’s book are not as problematic as in Camilleri’s series. This assumption, however, is not completely persuasive.

Part 2, entitled “Lombrosian Vivisection,” contains interesting analyses of Lombrosian references in Carlo Emilio Gadda’s and Carlo Lucarelli’s novels as well as Dario Argento’s films. The author brilliantly demonstrates that with their attention to the physiognomy and bodies of the characters, Gadda’s novels, in tune with Lombroso’s theory, are imbued with an epistemological strategy of “looking deeper and looking differently at the human body” to get to the heart of the groviglio of crime. For his part, by privileging the moment of death and highlighting the penetrable human body, Argento uses Lombrosian epistemology as a pretext to explore aesthetics. Finally, Lucarelli engages imaginative narrative strategies to serve a contemporary version of Lombrosian criminology that runs the risk of trivializing the criminal characters.

Past’s book integrates criminology in the context of Italian crime fiction in an effective manner and delineates a fascinating field. By extending the analysis of the giallo beyond the literary realm, this book is a welcome addition to crime fiction studies.