Winner of the NeRoma Noir Festival, The Beast is the latest novel by the Neapolitan writer and director Luca Delgado (Libraccio editore). Napolitano, born in 1979, Luca Delgado is a writer and screenwriter, as well as a political activist (he was a member of the Organized Crime Investigation Commission of the City of Naples).
This third novel of his is a thriller set in Naples that narrates the electoral campaign of Stefano, a mayoral candidate for a political party called “Fronte Nuovo”. Along with him, in his political rise, his lifelong friends Bruno and Titti. It will be an anonymous letter with a death announcement delivered to the three protagonists to transport the reader to a story that he manages to capture from the front pages.
The pacing is fast, the characters are recognizable and well structured, and the writing is original and never predictable.
Define last job Slim only a mystery could be a euphemism, because there are many books together.
The Beast has the characteristics of a thriller: it provokes tension and suspense.
It manages to take the reader to a state of fear, fascinates them and involves them in solving the puzzle.
Who is the beast? Who wrote those letters?
But it is not only this.
The novel is intertwined and overlaps with other equally interesting interpretations.
The Beast also has bildungsroman traits: it follows the evolution and maturation of the three protagonists.
He talks about their friendship, their dreams, their relationship.
The intertwining lives of Bruno, Titta and Stefano collide in a two-dimensional time that runs through the entire book: the 90s of the first cigarettes in Mergellina’s car and the nervous fingers that shake today’s mobile phone.
A continuous passage of records, yesterday and today that follow one another as if to explain that we are nothing more than the result of what we were, of the choices we make.
The link of these continuous changes of time, the former mayor of Naples who becomes the immobile center on which to reason.
The fixed point from which to view the history.
But Delgado’s is also a brilliant political communication manual: here the author manages to provide the reader with a complete overview of the skills and strategies that are implemented during an electoral campaign.
An interesting point of view that explains how in recent years politics has placed anger, fear and hatred at the center of its communication as connectors, as extremely powerful (and unique) propaganda tools.
Delgado manages to endow the noir with many shades of color, with Naples being the perfect setting for these continuous changes of register.
Perfect for this story we go thousand cultureslike Pino Daniele’s Naples.
It is evident that the writer knows the city intimately: he manages to tell it in a new way and capture it around the story.
Without ever taking it off the pages: reading like watching a movie.
You are in Naples, in that story, in that street with Stefano, Titti and Bruno.
And you can’t leave there.
You have to stay there until the end, until the last page.
The Beast investigates, discovers and makes you think.
The Beast is a smart book.
One that everyone should read.
Even those who don’t like film noir.
Lucas Delgado
The beast
publisher’s brochure
240 pages
€14.90
Upcoming presentations in Naples:
Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. – Il Clubino, Via Luca Giordano 73.
Friday May 26, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. – The Acrobat Bookshop, Via Montale, 23, Mugnano di Napoli
