A Pimp's Notes

Book excerpt: From a bestselling Italian author comes a sharply observed new mystery set in the seedy underworld of 1970s Milan Giorgio Faletti's first thriller, I Kill, took Europe by storm, selling over five million copies. The Corriere della Sera, Italy's leading newspaper, crowned him "the greatest Italian writer." In 2010, with the explosive publication of A Pimp's Notes, Faletti won international celebrity as a writer of world-class, tightly wound, psychologically nuanced thrillers. It's 1978. Italy has just been shocked by the kidnapping of the politician Aldo Moro by the left-leaning terrorist group the Red Brigades. In Milan, the upper class continues to amuse itself in luxury restaurants, underground clubs, and cabarets. This is Bravo's milieu. Enigmatic and cynical, Bravo makes his living catering to the tastes, fantasies, and fetishes of the wealthy and depraved. When the mysterious Carla enters his life, what begins as a clandestine romance quickly becomes a nightmare that will transform Bravo into a man wanted by the police, by organized crime, and even by the Red Brigades. As the web around him tightens, Bravo will be forced to confront the violence of the times in which he lives as well as his own connections to the political and criminal networks that control contemporary Italy.