L'Alligatore

PI Marco "the Alligator" Buratti returns in a thriller. Now, Massimo Carlotto gives his American readers his most memorable character yet: ex-con turned private investigator Marco Buratti, a.k.a. the Alligator. Closing the door on a crime-ridden past, Buratti plans to spend the rest of his days in the darkness of a seedy nightclub sipping Calvados and listening to the blues. But things don't quite work out as he planned: though he may be through with his past, his past isn't through with him. When his gangster friend Beniamino Rossini's girlfriend is kidnapped, Buratti is forced to investigate a case of international drug dealing. He will be thrown headfirst into the underworld he has struggled to escape. In the world of Massimo Carlotto's fiction, new and old criminal organizations collide and innocent bystanders are as hard to find as honest cops.

The writer immerses readers in a gritty noir novel featuring PI Marco "the Alligator" Buratti (Il Manifesto). This novel, by one of Italy's bestselling crime novelists, provides a unique perspective on the criminal and social dynamics that dominate contemporary Italy. One of the many robberies that plague Northeast Italy goes wrong and ends with a brutal murder. The police investigation turns up nothing. Two years later, Marco Buratti, alias "the Alligator," is asked to look into the crime and find out who was responsible. Buratti's employer is young, the youngest client he has ever had; he is only twelve years old and is the son of one of the victims. The Alligator realizes right from the start that the truth is cloaked, twisted, shocking. Together with his associates, Beniamino Rossini and Max the Memory, he finds himself mixed up in a story involving contraband gold and blood vendettas between criminal gangs.