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A Good Person
Duca Lamberti, son of a detective, became a doctor, a good doctor – until he helped a cancer patient die. As a result, he lost his licence to practise medicine and had to spend three years in prison. After that, he was left with nothing, but he had friends, especially his late father’s colleague, who believed in him and got him a job. It is a very special job, and Lamberti hesitates at first, but then he accepts the offer and becomes a private investigator more or less overnight.
His work takes him into the depths of Milanese society, where criminals rule and life can be brutal. He was only supposed to help a young man get off alcohol, but Lamberti quickly becomes entangled in a gruesome story behind his protégé’s alcohol addiction. Then the police gets involved, the criminal investigation department … and Lamberti investigates involuntarily, but successfully. However, an undercover operation gets out of hand …
From now on, Lamberti moves between two worlds, on the one hand as a private detective, on the other as an unlicensed doctor … and ultimately he repeatedly works for the criminal investigation department. He probably inherited his instinct for crime and criminals from his father. Ultimately, this leads him straight into the police force, where he works as an investigator under his father’s friend.
… and at the very end, he also regains his licence to practise medicine.
What kind of Milan does Lamberti live in?
It’s a big city with many people who want a piece of the pie. In the 1960s, the police’s resources are still quite limited, especially when it comes to securing crime scenes, analysing evidence and systematically recording crimes. Everything is still managed analogously – and much remains unpunished.
Lamberti is not satisfied with this. He wants to see justice done; crimes must be punished. This is a fine line to tread, because often, too often, people take the law into their own hands, turning themselves or their loved ones into criminals.
Crime seems to be omnipresent in Milan. Young women are seduced and end up on the streets. They are sold across the country. When problems arise, the situation is resolved through murder. Women are raped and mutilated. People are drowned in their cars. The half-dead are burned somewhere. There is blackmail and shootings. Gang wars break out and get out of hand. Innocent people get caught in the crossfire. Revenge, along with greed, is the main motivation for everyone involved in some way. Then there is the silence … No one trusts the police, everyone tries to stay out of it and perhaps profit a little from everything they observe.
During these years, Lamberti experiences many things that fill him with revulsion, but he does his job. Sometimes he seems to despair, especially when confronted with brutal acts of bloodshed.
Is Lamberti one of the hardcore detectives on the Californian scene? A little bit, yes … His cases come from the gutter, bloody clashes in the dirt of the big city – no one here murders during tea time over cake and pastries. Crimes, and murders in particular, are acts of desperation or attempts to escape one’s fate and poverty, or simply driven by power and greed. A good person has a hard time in this environment.
One more thing: with the Duca Lamberti series, Giorgio Scerbanenco laid the foundation for crime novels in Italy – or so they say.