Almost Blue

SILVER DAGGER AWARD

This is a version of Stransky's original City Lights translation which she edited for a British public. A serial killer is terrorizing Bologna and rookie Detective Inspector Grazia Negro is determined to solve the case. She only has one witness who can identify the killer - and he is blind. From these three perspectives Lucarelli, master of Italian noir, weaves a gripping thriller.

Carlo Lucarelli has written more than twenty novels and numerous short stories. Together with Marcello Fois and Loriano Macchiavelli he founded "Gruppo 13," a collective of crime-writers in the region of Emilia-Romagna.

Reviews | Almost Blue

But pride of place must go to the first of Italian Carlo Lucarelli's Inspector Negro novels, translated by Oonagh Stransky….a compact and powerful masterpiece.

Maxim Jakubowski, The Guardian

It's a spare, scary tone poem of a crime novel (fluidly translated by Oonagh Stransky), set in Bologna and featuring Inspector Grazia Negro, a woman detective assigned to a special unit that identifies and tracks down serial killers.

Peter Guttridge, The Guardian