The first novel translated into French by Piergiorgo Pulixi, island of souls (Gallmeister, 2021), had revealed a spellbinding, powerfully lyrical and rocky writing, in the very image of the territory where it took root: Sardinia. This second opus in the language of Molière, which begins near Cagliari, but which this time will stretch as far as Milan, further underlines Pulixi’s breath and power of evocation.
Here in The illusion of evil, we will find the same two improbable inspectors who made the success of the first investigation: Mara Rais and Eva Croce, just as “opposite” and complementary – Rais is a fashion card who swears like a carter and Croce, a cryptopunk cultured until at your fingertips. The two investigators are incredibly efficient despite everything that sets them apart.
But to this unpredictable duo is added a new character who is just as “original and colorful”: the criminologist Vito Strega, dispatched from Milan by the Violent Crime Analysis Unit (UACV). All three face an insidious criminal, a kind of avenger who has managed to convince the whole country, aided by sensationalist media, to support him in his quest and who has been nicknamed the Dentist… we let you guess why.
Judgment without appeal
The case quickly takes on unexpected proportions. It is that the avenger denounces the corruption and the inefficiency of Italian justice: difficult to be against. He kidnaps culprits freed by the court and he even goes so far as to have the public vote on the fate of these criminals after presenting their case on social networks. He first tackles a pedophile who has systematically destroyed his little victims… but who got away with it because of the prescribed deadlines. The public judgment is final and the man is sacrificed, live on video, without the police being able to find his electronic signature anywhere. When a corrupt judge at the head of a network that has enriched itself by taking advantage of bribes from various sources is kidnapped in turn… Strega is sent to Cagliari.
The plot is tight, full of unexpected twists and relies on a political and social reading of the Italian legal system seriously undermined by what amounts to our “Jordan judgment”; Pulixi is not tender, and neither are his characters. But everything rests first and foremost on the deep humanity of these three exceptional investigators, Rais, Croce and Strega. All of them exude an authenticity so intense that one quickly comes to wish to find them as soon as possible in a new case.
Add to that an exceptional setting based on a writing well rendered by the translation; a little less chthonic, less raspy than in the first survey, the language of Piergiorgio Pulixi is just as effective and evocative. Be careful though: all this risks provoking travel tastes in Sardinia…