Milan’s police headquarters. Giuliano Casablanca, known as Ginko, is a young police commissioner newly transferred from the Homicide Division to the Passport Office. He and his team – Panettone, an overweight cop; Zhong, a Sino-Roman who opted for a state job instead of his father’s bar; and Minimo Sindacale, an indefatigable loafer – duly appear installed in a relaxing, monotonous desk job, daily fighting, at most, the red tape. Milan is a city full of surprises, though, and its dark side lurks behind its organization and efficiency. The commissioner hankers back to his investigating days, so when the Police Chief is on vacation, he pieces together the story of one Issa, from Mali, an escapee from the refugee facility in Via Sammartini, hard by the tracks in the Central Station. He was found dead on the top of a train heading to Switzerland. What looks at first like a simple accident involving a migrant seeking his freedom turns out to be a tale of drug trafficking and abuse. RAI journalist Paolo Maggioni is a correspondent for Rai News 24 and for the Radio 1 program Forrest, hosted by Luca Bottura. He himself was a host and writer of Caterpillar (Rai Radio 2), and also with Radio Popolare from 2002 to 2011, on the program jalla!jalla!, among others. Maggioni made a radio-documentary on Beppe Viola, which became the TV program Quelli che... Beppe Viola, which he co-wrote with Paolo Aleotti. Over the course of his career, he has won two journalism awards: a Special Mention at the 2010 Sodalitas Awards (for Onde Road – Tour del Rwanda, with Marco Pastonesi), and a Special Mention at the 2012 Mauro Rostagno Awards (for Mauro acchiappava notizie, directed by Marco Ligabue). He teaches in the Master’s program for journalism at Milan’s Catholic University.

Milan, 1920. One morning, as he leaves home, police commissioner Carlo De Vincenzi entrusts a blue folder to the concierge at his address in via Massena, telling her a journalist, a certain Augusto De Angelis, will be stopping by to pick it up. The matronly Matilde Maria Ballerini takes a peek at the papers inside, only to find that alongside photos and postcards are the stories of some of the most amazing encounters the “poet of crime” has made over his career and investigations into break-ins at his home and at Sant’Eustorgio, into bodies found drowned in Milan’s canals, murdered atop the Torre Littoria, or right in the middle of the Armor Room at the Castello Sforzesco. Plus special encounters with famous figures the Milan police have dealt with, like Riccardo Bauer, Gio Ponti, Ho Chí Minh, Alfred Hitchcock, and Antonio Gramsci. Luca Crovi, an expert in noir novels, writes for various newpapers and magazines and is the author of the monograph Tutti i colori del giallo (2002), which was turned into a radio program of the same name on Radio2. He has four novels to his credit – L’ombra del campione (2018), L’ultima canzone del Naviglio (2020), Il Gigante e la Madonnina (2022), and Il mistero della torre del parco e altre storie (2022) – all featuring commissioner Carlo De Vincenzi, iconic protagonist of earlier cult mysteries written in the ‘30s and ‘40s by Augusto De Angelis, and adapted for the small screen by Paolo Stoppa in the ‘70s. Crovi is a long-time juror for the Scerbanenco Award and collaborator with Sergio Bonelli Editore, the Milan publisher for whom he edits the comics series on Commissioner Ricciardi, the Bastards of Pizzofalcone, and Deadwood Dick.

This story starts with a naked woman, dead, the belt of a bathrobe wrapped around her neck. That doesn’t necessarily mean she was strangled. It continues with a suspect who’s half-Sicilian, half-Tunisian, and half-Croatian, and 100% mysterious. It then delves into a sting operation to catch drug dealers, possibly connected to the crime. Or not. In other words: a story in which nothing is as it seems. There’s little to go on for the scrupulous Inspector Giovanni Armani and the sarcastic district attorney Giacomo Cacciaguerra, both probing the murder alongside – though they’d rather be miles away from – the disastrous yet oddly lucky Agent Salvo Buonfine. Irony is, Armani thought that the police headquarters in Como, where he hailed from, would be a safe haven, when he was transferred there after a tragic accident on the job. And yet, this complex investigation, with all its surprising twists, might well be hiding a case of love at first sight. The name of Gino Vignali (Milan) is inextricably linked to that of Michele Mozzati. They’ve been partnering up since college, going by the moniker Gino & Michele. With others, they came up with the datebook Smemoranda. Present at the founding of the Italian cabaret phenomenon Zelig, they helped it evolve and created the TV program of the same name. Their stage credits date back to Comedians and Eldorado (1985-1986), which they co-wrote with Gabriele Salvatores for the Teatro dell’Elfo. From 1986 to the late ‘90s, the duo worked their magic for Paolo Rossi’s stage hits, including Chiamatemi Kowalski, C’è quel che c’è, and Operaccia romantica.  They did the same for Aldo, Giovanni & Giacomo from 1995 to 1999, writing theatrical sketches the likes of I corti a Tel chi el telùn. The two-man team has published several books, such as Anche le formiche nel loro piccolo s’incazzano (1991), Saigon era Disneyland (in confronto) (1991), Il pianeta dei Bauscia: viaggio al centro della Lega (1993), and Neppure un rigo di cronaca (2000). On the film front, they penned the dialogues in Kamikazen – Ultima notte a Milano by Salvatores (1988) and Volere volare by Maurizio Nichetti and Guido Manuli (1991). They also had a hand in scripting Così è la vita by Aldo Giovanni & Giacomo (1998). Vignali made his debut as a noir novelist in 2018, with La chiave di tutto: inverno (Solferino, 2018), the first installment of a quartet set in Rimini, each in one of the four seasons of the year and all featuring Costanza Confalonieri Bonnet, the well-born deputy police chief with a suite at the Grand Hotel. Vignali went on to publish Ci vuole orecchio: primavera (2019), La notte rosa: estate (2019), and Come la grandine: autunno (2020). With his latest, I milanesi si innamorano il sabato, Vignali changes the characters and the atmosphere, but sticks to the fast clip and the playful tone.

People like him are the ones who usually tell the story, be it about business, politics, or the media. Not this time. He won’t be writing the story – this story – now. The British MP Ritchie Gulliver is dead. Castrated and left to bleed in an empty Leith warehouse, down at the port of Edinburg. Racist, vicious, and corrupt, many thought he had it coming. But nobody could have predicted this. The suspects are many: corporate rivals, political opponents, the countless groups he's offended. And the vulnerable and marginalized, who bore the brunt of his cruelty – those without a voice, without a choice, without a chance. Detective Ray Lennox, the protagonist of Crime, is on the case, and the trail of blood is long. Others die after Gulliver, all of them big wigs. Someone may well be carrying out ghoulish criminal designs in the name of justice, and Lennox needs to figure out who the real victims – and the real killers – actually are. Irvine Welsh was born in Scotland, but now splits his time between London, Edinburgh, and Miami, where you’re likely to find him in the winter. Previously, he did stints in Dublin and Amsterdam as well. A working-class boy and a leading exponent of the so-called ‘chemical generation’, after a series of odd jobs and a period of drug addiction, he was turned on to literature thanks to Docherty by William McIlvanney, the book that got him thinking about himself, and writing. His first novel, Trainspotting, in 1993, grew out of his perusal of his old diaries and a re-elaboration of events from his life. The book was an instant success, amplified even further by the famous screen adaptation by Danny Boyle. Welsh appeared in the film as well, in the role of Mikey Forrester. In Italy, his novels –Trainspotting, Ecstasy, Acid House, Filth, Marabou Stork Nightmares, Glue, Porno, The Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs, Kingdom of Fife, Crime, Reheated Cabbage, Rattlesnakes, Skagboys, The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins, A Decent Ride, The Blade Artist, Dead Men’s Trousers, and The Long Knives – have all been published by Guanda. As of last year, the cases involving Ray Lennox have been turned into a TV series, Crime, created by Welsh himself, together with Dean Cavanagh. The first six-episode season aired on BritBox in 2021, while the two authors have written the second season and are starting to shoot it by year’s end. This season will air on the UK streaming service ITVX.

The year is 1939. Five years have passed since Inspector Ricciardi’s life was abruptly turned upside down. And now the winds of hatred buffeting Europe risk sweeping away the very idea of civilization. On the brink of disaster, the only sure thing is crime. In the undergrowth of the woods, the bodies of a young couple are found. They were making love when someone brutally murdered them. The motive for the murder is murky from the start: political interests may well behind this crime. With the help of his sidekick Maione – concerned about a family matter of his own – Ricciardi will have to crack the case and at the same time protect a good friend who is at huge risk over his love of freedom. Meanwhile, Ricciardi’s daughter Marta is growing up, and it’s time for the commissioner to learn if she has inherited his own curse: the ability to see and hear the dead. In 2007 Maurizio De Giovanni attracted the attention of Italy’s literary scene after winning an award, thanks to a novel set in Naples in the 1930s, featuring a police commissioner, Luigi Alfredo Ricciardi: I Will Have Vengeance, published by Fandango and republished in 2012 (along with the entire series) by Einaudi. Thus began his highly popular series that counts thirteen novels to date, with the latest, Caminito, plus three stories in the collection L’omicidio Carosino. Le prime indagini del commissario Ricciardi. The equally popular TV series based on the Ricciardi novels aired on Raiuno in 2021, with the second season  scheduled to air in the first six months of 2023. In 2012, De Giovanni won the Scerbanenco Award for The Crocodile, which introduced Inspector Lojacono, a protagonist of another hit series as well, set in contemporary Naples: The Bastards of Pizzofalcone, ten novels to date and another well-loved TV series starring Alessandro Gassmann and Carolina Crescentini. With his more recent novels, Sara al tramonto, Le parole di Sara, Una lettera per Sara, and Gli occhi di Sara, all published by Garzanti, De Giovanni has created another character, a former secret service agent, now retired, with the gift of invisibility and a talent for stealing people’s secrets. And lately the author has enriched his Mina Settembre series with the fourth and fifth installment Troppo freddo per Settembre and Una sirena a Settembre, both published by Einaudi, while the first three novels came out with Sellerio. This year, along with Caminito, De Giovanni has brought out L'equazione del cuore. There are myriad comics and graphic novels based on the author’s works. Since 2017, Sergio Bonelli Editore has published eight comic books based on the Inspector Ricciardi novels and five annual magazines with unpublished stories. The same publisher has brought out three comics devoted to The Bastards of Pizzofalcone novels.