By Ruggero Scaturro

In July 2021, the president of the Antimafia Commission of the Italian Parliament – established in 1963 to look into the phenomenon of organized crime in Italy and assess the adequacy of existing legislative and administrative measures to counter it – declassified the minutes of a meeting between the Commission, the celebrated judge, Giovanni Falcone, and the other prosecuting magistrates of the so-called ‘Antimafia Pool’ of judges (see below). The meeting was held in Palermo, Sicily, in June 1990.1 Barring cases concerning national security or the safety of public officials, over recent decades the Commission has developed the practice of publishing the minutes of all its meetings, demonstrating a commitment to transparency and the rule of law. The decision to declassify this 117-page record of the meeting, however, comes more than a year after a commitment taken by the Commission’s president, Nicola Morra, in 2020 to declassify all the Commission’s minutes from 1963 to 2001.2 Having scrutinized the entire archive of its minutes, Italian civil society movement I Cittadini Contro le Mafie e la Corruzione (‘citizens against the mafia and corruption’) realized that the 1990 document was the only one yet to be made public. Given the potential relevance of its contents, they formally requested the Commission’s president to keep to his word and declassify it.3 A full unofficial translation of the minutes of the meeting is available at: https://globalinitiative.net/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/gitoc-falcone-annex.pdf. From the initial pages of the minutes, it emerges that the 1990 meeting had been convened to discuss the reasons for delays in investigations carried out by the Antimafia Pool. When discussing these delays in the magistrates’ work, however, Falcone went on to disclose what appear to be new details pertaining to the context of the unsolved assassination a decade earlier of Piersanti Mattarella, the Governor of Sicily and brother of the current President of the Italian Republic, Sergio Mattarella.4 Mattarella, whose killers are still unknown – although there is consensus that Cosa Nostra kingpins were behind the hit – arguably personifies the anti-mafia movement in Sicily since the early 1960s, a period in which he began to gain international recognition and support for his good governance.5 The following section offers an analysis of those parts of the minutes that deal with a theory Falcone had developed that offered, in his mind, a reliable investigative route to uncovering the truth of the unresolved murder of the Governor of Sicily. In addition, thanks to an interview with Judge Antonio Balsamo, current President of the Court of Palermo, it sets out an explanation of how Cosa Nostra may have teamed up with an unusual ally to eliminate the respected politician.

Geneva: Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, 2022. 26p.

By CoIin Heston.

In this raucous Aussie story, corpses pop up in the Yarra river while Lizzie entertains her powerful and kinky clients in her Winnebago, parked on the ferry to Williamstown. Tightly bound Detective Striker, confronted by the mob of Catholics, wharfies and communists who rule Williamstown, struggles to solve the mystery. Lizzie gets engaged to her uncle Bobby, the lame ferry driver, and her mum, Babs, spellbound by the strange Father Zappia, tries to solve her own mystery of St. Robert’s toe. She throws a raucous send-off party for Lizzie, and out of the chaos emerges many truths..

Five Star Readers’ Favorite! “…true Aussie humor…a satirical drIama …will reward those who can untie the hilarious Gordian knot.” See all reviews

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2020. 284p.

By M.H. Abrams..

The effect of opium visions on the works of DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge. “ Four eminent English authors were addicted to opium. Each author spent a considerable part of his life in a dream world which differs amazingly from that in which we live. Each author utilized the imagery from these dreams in his literary creations, and sometimes, under the direct inspiration of opium, achieved his best writing. Thus, a knowledge of the opium world these authors inhabited is essential to a complete understanding of their work. In the cases where critics have not entirely neglected this factor, their analysis of opium effects is too often a flight of conjecture unimpeded by any burden of definite knowledge. Strangely enough, although “there is hardly a more difficult chapter in the whole of pharmacology than . . . a thoroughly exact analysis of the effects of drugs,”(Louis Lewin, Phantastica, London, 1931, Preface, p. x.) this is just the field wherein each man seems to consider himself expert. When a critic of established reputation is misled into characterizing all of Coleridge’s finest poems as “the chance brain-blooms of a season of physiological ecstasy,”(John Mackinnon Robertson, New Essays towards a Critical Method, London, 1897, p. 190) it is time to examine the facts.

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  Accordingly, I have based my investigation of the nature of opium phenomena on the statements of habituates and the findings of psychological authorities. Moreover, since to postulate addiction to opium merely from the “abnormality” of a man’s work. although the usual method, is illogical, my approach to each of the authors under consideration is biographical. Limitations of the length allowed for this thesis have imposed limitations in subject. I have dealt with no drug but opium, except in a passing reference in the Notes. Foreign authors I have had to omit; and of English authors I have been able to treat at length only those four whose long addiction to the drug is certain: DeQuincey, Crabbe, Francis Thompson, and Coleridge. Even with these men, it has been necessary to cut down evidence to a minimum, but indications for further investigation will be found in the Notes. There is no definite proof of addiction to opium in the lives of James Thomson and Poe. In their works, too, indications of the influence of alcohol are so strong that it would be difficult to distinguish any possible effect of opium. Since the date of the inception of Coleridge’s opium habit is necessary for a determination of the influence of the drug on his great creative period, I have gathered in an appendix all the evidence available on this agitated question.”

New York: Octagon Books, 1971. 104p.

By Susanna Lee.

The cynical but kind-hearted detective is the soul of the classic hard-boiled story, that chronicle of world-weary urban pessimism. In Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority, Susanna Lee argues that this fiction functions as a measure for individual responsibility in the modern world and that it demonstrates the enduring status of individual conscience across a variety of cultural crises. In this major rethinking of the hard-boiled genre, Lee suggests that, whether in Los Angeles, New York, or Paris, the hard-boiled detective is the guardian of individual moral authority and the embodiment of ideals in a corrupt environment. Lee traces the history of the hard-boiled detective through the twentieth century and on both sides of the Atlantic (France and the United States), tying the idea of morality to the character model in nuanced, multifaceted ways. When the heroic model devolves, the very conceptual validity of individual moral authority can seem to devolve as well. Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority charts the evolution of that character model of the hard-boiled hero, the mid-century deterioration of his exemplarity, and twenty-first-century endeavors to resuscitate the accountable hero. The history of hard-boiled crime fiction tells nothing less than the story of individual autonomy and accountability in modern Western culture.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016. 248p.

By Claire Solomon.

The first comprehensive and interdisciplinary study of the prostitute in Latin American literature, Claire Thora Solomon’s book The Naturalist Prostitute and Her Avatars in Latin American Literature, 1880–2010 shows the gender, ethnic, and racial identities that emerge in the literary figure of the prostitute during the consolidation of modern Latin American states in the late nineteenth century in the literary genre of Naturalism. Solomon first examines how legal, medical, and philosophical thought converged in Naturalist literature of prostitution. She then traces the persistence of these styles, themes, and stereotypes about women, sex, ethnicity, and race in the twentieth and twenty-first century literature with a particular emphasis on the historical fiction of prostitution and its selective reconstruction of the past.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2014. 223p.

Edited By Marlene Tromp Maria K. Bachman Heidi Kaufman.

In this groundbreaking collection, scholars explore Victorian xenophobia as a rhetorical strategy that transforms “foreign” people, bodies, and objects into perceived invaders with the dangerous power to alter the social fabric of the nation and the identity of the English. Essays in the collected edition look across the cultural landscape of the nineteenth century to trace the myriad tensions that gave rise to fear and loathing of immigrants, aliens, and ethnic/racial/religious others. This volume introduces new ways of reading the fear and loathing of all that was foreign in nineteenth-century British culture, and, in doing so, it captures nuances that often fall beyond the scope of current theoretical models. “Xenophobia” not only offers a distinctive theoretical lens through which to read the nineteenth century; it also advances and enriches our understanding of other critical approaches to the study of difference. Bringing together scholarship from art history, history, literary studies, cultural studies, women’s studies, Jewish studies, and postcolonial studies, Fear, Loathing, and Victorian Xenophobia seeks to open a rich and provocative dialogue on the global dimensions of xenophobia during the nineteenth century.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013. 390.

By Sharon Stockton.

In The Economics of Fantasy: Rape in Twentieth-Century Literature, Sharon Stockton examines the persistence and the evolution of the rape narrative in twentieth-century literature—the old story of male power and violence; female passivity and penetrability. What accounts for its persistence? How has the story changed over the course of the twentieth century? In this provocative book, Stockton investigates the manner in which the female body—or to be more precise, the violation of the female body—serves as a metaphor for a complex synthesis of masculinity and political economy. From high modernism to cyberpunk, Pound to Pynchon, Stockton argues that the compulsive return to the rape story, articulates—among other things—the gradual and relentless removal of Western man from the fantastical capitalist role of venturesome, industrious agency. The metamorphosis of the twentieth-century rape narrative registers a desperate attempt to preserve traditional patterns of robust, entrepreneurial masculinity in the face of economic forms that increasingly disallow illusions of individual authority. It is important to make clear that the genre of rape story studied here presumes a white masculine subject and a white feminine object. Stockton makes the case that the aestheticized rape narrative reveals particular things about the way white masculinity represents itself. Plotting violent sexual fantasy on the grid of economic concerns locates masculine agency in relation to an explicitly contingent material system of power, value, and order. It is in this way that The Economics of Fantasy discloses the increased desperation with which the body has been made to carry ideology under systems of advanced capitalism.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006. 235p.

By Andrew Mangham.

“Bodies are very unstable things in Dickens. In addition to the various characters with parts that are missing or defunct, like Wackford Squeers, Silas Wegg, Mr Smallweed, Mrs Skewton, Captain Cuttle, and Mrs Clennam, we find bodies that are taken apart (like the mangled remains of Mr Carker and Rigauld) and (re)assembled (like Mrs Jarley’s waxworks or Mr Venus’s French Gentleman). We encounter living bodies without souls, like the prisoners in “A Visit to Newgate” (1836) and American Notes (1842), and souls like Little Nell and Oliver Twist whose bodies seem barely capable of holding them in. More gruesomely, Dickensian bodies have a tendency to turn into slime and ash, such as when Miss Havisham is burned in Great Expectations (1860–61), or when the inhabitants of a city churchyard threaten to sully the appropriated dress of Lady Dedlock.”

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2016. 272p.

By Guy Morton.

We have few authors on our fiction list possessed with the same gift of analysis into human character and motive as Mr. Morton. Indeed, nothing pleases him more than to play one type of individual against another, and since their actions culminate, as a rule, in deeds of violence, the author is never lacking either in material or scope for his own peculiar abilities. When, therefore, Mr. Morton turns his attentions to a rather mixed gathering at The Briars, a pleasantly situated country-house, the reader is entitled to expect some starthng disclosures. Nor does he find himself disappointed. Two murders, each of great brutaHty, take place in rapid succession, and the perpetrator, obviously one who has little to learn either in the art of con- cealment or dissimulation, effectively side-tracks the poHce from the vital issues and appears to rest securely behind the cloak of their incompetence. But whoever committed the crime completely under-estimated the talents of the ever vigilant Amor Kairns, who finally brings the criminal to book in an extremely dramatic quick curtain.

London: Skeffington & Son, 1900. 288p.

By Theodore Dreiser.

Theodore Dreiser was inspired by a true story to write this novel about an ambitious, socially insecure young man who finds himself caught between two very different women--and two very different visions of what his life could be. Clyde Griffiths was born poor and is poorly educated, but his prospects begin to improve when he is offered a job by a wealthy uncle who owns a shirt factory. Soon he achieves a managerial position, and despite being warned to stay away from the women he manages, he becomes involved with Roberta, a poor factory worker who falls in love with him. At the same time, he catches the eye of Sondra, the glamorous socialite daughter of another factory owner, and begins neglecting his lover to court her. When Roberta confronts Clyde with her pregnancy, Clyde's hopes of marrying Sondra are threatened, and he conceives a desperate plan to preserve his dream.

New York: Modern Library, 1925. 860p.

By Arthur Conan Doyle.

It is impossible to read and weigh the facts in connection with the conviction of Oscar Slater in May, 1909, at the High Court in Edinburgh, without feeling deeply dissatisfied with the proceedings, and morally certain that justice was not done. Under the circumstances of Scotch law I am not clear how far any remedy exists, but it will, in my opinion, be a serious scandal if the man be allowed upon such evidence to spend his life in a convict prison. The verdict which led to his condemnation to death, was given by a jury of fifteen, who voted: Nine for "Guilty," five for "Non-proven," and one for "Not Guilty." Under English law, this division of opinion would naturally have given cause for a new trial.

New York: Hodder & Stoughton, George H. Doran, 1912. 102p.

By William Johnston and Paul West.

In every detail so far this day was a duplicate of almost every previous day in Josiah Hopkins' life since he had first come to Gray don as instructor in chemistry. But the deadly sameness ceased then and there, marking the eighteenth of May as a day long to be remembered in the history of the little college.

Toronto: McLeod & Allen, 1910. 344p.

By Alan Pinkerton.

I desire to again call attention to the fact that the stories herein contained, as in the case of their predecessors in the series, are literally true. The incidents in these cases have all actually occurred as related, and there are now living many witnesses to corroborate my statements. Maroney, the expressman, is living in Georgia, having been released during the war. Mrs. Maroney is also alive. Anyone desiring to convince himself of the absolute truthfulness of this narrative can do so by examining the court records in Montgomery, Ala., where Maroney was convicted. The facts stated in the second volume are well known to many residents of Chicago. Young Bright was in the best society during his stay at the Clifton House, and many of his friends will remember him. His father is now largely interested in business in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. The events connected with the abduction of " The Two Sisters," will be readily recalled by W. L. Church, Esq., of Chicago, and others. The story of " Alexander Gay," the Frenchman, will be found in 2047318 6 PREFA CE. the criminal records of St. Louis, where he was sentenced for forgery.

New York: G. W. Dillingham Co., 1903. 256p.

By Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Or The Devils. Translated From The Russian By Constance Garnett. “Inspired by the true story of a political murder that horried Russians in 1869, Fyodor Dostoevsky conceived of Demons as a "novel-pamphlet" in which he would say everything about the plague of materialist ideology that he saw infecting his native land. What emerged was a prophetic and ferociously funny masterpiece of ideology and murder in pre-revolutionary Russia.” 1872 (Russian)

A Read-Me.Org classic reprint. 1916 (English). 718p.

By Fyodor Dostoevsky.

This was his last novel, published as a serial in The Russian Messenger from January 1879 to November 1880. Dostoevsky died less than four months after its publication. Set in 19th-century Russia, this book is a passionate philosophical novel that enters deeply into questions of God, free will, and morality. It is a theological drama dealing with problems of faith, doubt, and reason in the context of a modernizing Russia, with a plot that revolves around the subject of patricide.

NY. Lowell Press. 1880. 600p.

By Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

A timeless story of love and violence, the rationalized triumph of passion over reason, of self deception over care, envy and hatred of authority and class, and of course, much, much more in this dense novel.

NY. Parkway Printing (1886) 600p.

By Robert Louis Stevenson.

Set in the backdrop later Victorian London, this book can be told as belonging to the category of science fiction, psychological thriller and suspense thriller. Dr Jekyll, a famous and notable scientist seems to be somehow linked with Mr Hyde, a most-wanted criminal. Mr Utterson, a good renown lawyer of the period as well as Jekyll's good friend, tries connecting the dots to find out the truth, a most-shocking truth.

London: Longmans, Green, 1886. 141p.

By Wilkie Collins.

The loss of the diamond opens the beginning of this adventure and events as related by Gabriel Betteredge, house-steward in the service of Julia, Lady Verinder. “ The Moonstone is a 19th-century British epistolary novel. It is an early modern example of the detective novel, and established many of the ground rules of the modern genre. Told from the perspective of 11different characters, tale of mystery and suspicion was considered the first modern English detective novel at its time of publication.” (Amazon).

NY. Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1868) 510 pages.

By Victor Hugo.

Testimony of an eyewitness. History of a Crime is a novel based on actual events surrounding the assumption of power of Napoleon III following the 1848 revolution. Hugo's narrative takes in the four days during which Napoleon enacted a coup d'etat through which he assumed the Presidency and concludes with an exposition of the Franco-German War in 1970 which resulted in Napoleon's downfall. The narrative is written from the perspective of Hugo himself who was briefly involved in the before exiling himself to Belgium and thence to the Chanel Islands and while the novel is clearly dramatized, it does well to invoke the drama of the times and provides a sense of the times on behind the barricades.

NY. Harrow and Heston Classic Reprint. (1877) 515 pages.

By Sir Walter Scott.

“Edinburgh, 1736: an indignant crowd has gathered in the Grassmarket to watch the execution of a smuggler...” Opening with the start of the Porteous Riots, The Heart of Midlothian is one of Walter Scott's most famous historical novels, featuring murder, madness and seduction. Following his brutal suppression of the spectators, John Porteous, Captain of the Guard, is charged with murder and locked up in Edinburgh's Tolbooth prison, also known as the Heart of Midlothian. When news comes that he has been pardoned, an angry mob breaks into the jail, liberating its inmates and bringing Porteous to its own form of justice. But one prisoner who fails to take this opportunity to flee is Effie Deans, who, wrongly convicted of infanticide, has been sentenced to death. Jeanie, her older sister, sets off to London on foot to beg for her pardon from the queen.

Boston: Dana Estes & Co., 1893.