This was recommended bu a Goodreads friend. (Thanks.) I've been hooked on foreign police procedurals for a while now, Mankell, Leon, Larsson, Turston, Eriksson and some other unspellables from Norway and Sweden. I guess what I really like about them is the sense of grayness and dark. There's a gloom, a sense of constant struggle, particularly in the Italian police procedurals, of labyrinthine bureaucracy, the little guy seeking small truths amidst a gigantic, corrupt society. British PP's are civilized, while American PP's (except for the funny ones) have a cauldron of violence just lurking beneath the surface. Enough generalizations.Equal Danger is representative of the Italian gloom but it's a fable about power that supersedes national boundaries. Rogas, a police detective, in an unidentified country, but clearly patterned on Sicily on the 70's?, has been assigned, against his better judgment, to investigate the serial killing of judges and prosecuting attorneys. His approach is extremely methodical. Rogas, seems to operate almost independently of his chain of command, and outside the corruption of the system.
Rogas is the man of principles, the man without opinions; it's the only way he can stay with his job. His investigation leads him to the top levels of government. He is told to "sort of" drop the case. His boss says in a classic display of bureaucratese, "But right track or wrong,stay on it, stay on it." Rogas is supremely confident, but as the author says, "one can be cleverer than another, not cleverer than all others". The ending came as a shock.
The author, in a note at the end of the book, calls it a fable which he didn't submit to his publisher for two years. His explanation? "I began to write it with amusement, and as I was finishing it, I was no longer amused. " Neither is the reader.You'll also learn about Black Rice.
