The Mannequin Man by
Luca di Fulvio
pbk out October 05
(Bitter Lemon Press)
at £9.99
The book, originally published as L'Impagliatore in 2000, has already been
filmed as Occhi di Cristallo (Eyes of Crystal) in 2003, the year strangely enough,
when the book was voted one of the ten best European crime novels by the French
magazine Le Point. The film, shot in Bulgaria, gives an idea of the descent into Hell,
as the investigator loses himself in the maze of his investigation.
In an unnamed city, plagued with a binmen's strike that is causing outbreaks
of violence and discord, Inspector Giacomo Amaldi has to deal with a psycho killer,
an attractive girl frightened by a stalker, and the deranged mind of a colleague dying
of cancer. We start in the mind of the killer – a hunter of animals, and a stuffer of
their carcasses. Driven to extremes by the sight of animal passion and voyeurism too
close to his own nature, he commits murder. It is the nature of these initial murders
that draws Amaldi to the case. Soon, however, he is embroiled in a series of bizarre
killings where parts of the victims' bodies are replaced by sections of a life-size
wooden mannequin. Amaldi is a difficult and introverted man, with no real friends,
and the memory of a love lost in violent circumstances. It is his lost love's
resemblance to a young female student that also involves him in a case of stalking and
obscene correspondence. Giuditta Luzzatti, the student, comes from a similarly
deprived background to Amaldi, and they seem to be drawn to each other. Amaldi's
colleague, Nicola Frese is investigating an old case concerning a fire at an orphanage,
which intersects with the past of the killer. Also crossing the path of these characters
are the lives of Giuditta's professor, Avildsen, and the dying detective, Ajaccio.
Intertwining psychological analysis, and sociology, in a way that only a
European writer can, Di Fulvio slowly builds the tension until the climax that leaves
the reader on a knife-edge of tension. Di Fulvio, apparently a self-avowed
schizophrenic, juxtaposes horrifically detailed images of mutilated bodies, with
delicate internal investigations of the mind. The gradual degradation of the city, as it
sinks under its own refuse, deftly mirrors the growing derangement of the killer's
mind. And though Di Fulvio clearly doesn't mind if the reader can guess who the
killer really is before the end – he does leave clear clues – it does not matter to the
final conclusion. The separate elements of the story intersect and finally blend in an
elegant way that has nothing of the coincidental about it. It is a powerful and deeply
disturbing novel in the very best sense.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
The Mannequin Man by
Luca di Fulvio
