Almost Blue - Softcover

Lucarelli, Carlo

3.59

2,822 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 184343086X ISBN 13: 9781843430865

Publisher: Harvill Press, 2003

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An exquisitely plotted and unique psychological thriller. The author narrates through the eyes of the protagonists, placing the reader right in the action. You will only be needing the very edge of your seat on which to read this fast-paced thriller. A serial killer is terrorising the students of Bologna. Rookie female detective Grazia Negro is determined to solve the case. Only one witness can positively identify the killer...and he's blind. Simone spends his days in solitude, listening to Elvis Costello's Almost Blue and scanning the radio waves of the city to eavesdrop on other people's lives. He likes to imagine what people are like - based on the tone and 'colour' of their voice - and his acute hearing sets alarm bells ringing upon hearing the voice of the killer. The perspective alternates between the vulnerable and reclusive Simone and the dark and psychotic killer, obsessed with continually 'reincarnating' himself as his latest victim in a frantic bid to escape the torture of his inner demons. Lucarelli paints his villain in a brilliant and yet terrifying light and you will have to stop yourself from screaming out to Grazia and Simone to warn them of the looming danger.

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About the Author:

CARLO LUCARELLI was born in 1960 in Modena, Italy. One of the most exciting young writers in Europe, he has written eleven novels, all of them noirs. Lucarelli hosts a popular television series in Italy that examines unsettling and unsolved crimes and the urban centres in which they occur. He also teaches writing in Turin, sings in a post-punk band, and edits an on-line magazine, Incubatoio 16.

The sound of a record dropping onto a turntable is like a short sigh, with a touch of dust mixed in. The sound of the automated arm rising up from its rest is like a repressed hiccup or a tongue clucking drily—a plastic tongue. The needle, as it glides across the grooves, sibilates softly and crackles once or twice. Then comes the piano, a dripping faucet. Then, the bass, buzzing like an enormous fly at a window. Finally, the velvety voice of Chet Baker singing "Almost Blue."

If you listen carefully, you can almost hear him taking a breath and opening his mouth to sing the first A in Almost. It sounds so tight it seems more like a long O. Al–most–blue . . . with two pauses. He takes two breaths. You just know—you can tell—that his eyes are closed.

That’s why I like "Almost Blue;" you have to sing it with your eyes closed.

My eyes are closed even when I’m not singing. I’m blind. I’ve been blind since I was born. I’ve never seen colors or light or movement of any kind. I listen.

I scan the silence around me the way an electronic scanner sweeps the airwaves for sounds and voices, tuning automatically into any and all frequencies. I know how to use both my scanners perfectly, the internal one that I’ve had in my head for the past twenty-five years, ever since I was born, and the electric one in my room next to my stereo. If I had any friends, I know they’d call me Scanner. I’d like that.

But I don’t have any friends. It’s my own fault. I just don’t understand them. They talk about things that have nothing to do with me, they use words like lucid, opaque, luminous, invisible. Like in the bedtime story that my parents used to tell me when I was little to help me fall asleep—there was a beautiful princess whose skin was so clear it seemed transparent. I spent many sleepless nights wondering about that word before I understood that transparent means you can see into it.

For me, it means that you can poke your fingers through it.

Colors, too, have different meanings for me. Colors have a voice, colors make sounds, just like other things, so that I can distinguish between them. Identify them. Understand them. Azure, for example, with that z in the middle, is the color of zabaglione, zebras, and zinnias. Vases, violins, and vixen are all violet; a loud yell is always yellow. I can’t imagine black but I know it is the color of barrenness, of bleakness, the black hole of emptiness.

But it’s not just a question of alliteration. Some colors signify the very idea that they contain. For the sound of the idea inside them. Green, with that harsh r sound that scratches and flares its way out of the middle of the word, is the color of something that scathes and burns, like the sun. But blue, on the other hand, is the color of beauty. For example, for me, a pretty girl might have blonde hair, but a truly beautiful girl would be barefoot, brave, and have blue hair.

Some colors even have shapes. Something large and round is definitely red. But shapes aren’t as interesting; I don’t understand them. To understand them, you have to touch them, and I don’t like touching things or people. Besides, you can only touch things that are nearby. By listening and imagining I can travel further. I like sounds better.

That’s why I use my scanner. Every night I go up to my room in the attic and put on Chet Baker. I always put on the same record because I like the sound of his trumpet, all those deep, precise p sounds. I like the way he sings slowly, the way his voice seems to come from a place somewhere behind his throat. You can tell it’s hard for him to find his voice and that to find it he has to close his eyes and concentrate really hard. "Almost Blue" is my favorite song. I always play it first, even though it’s the last track on the record. I wait all day for that moment at night when the trumpet, the bass, the piano, and his voice come together and fill the emptiness inside my head.

Then I turn on the scanner and listen to the city.

I’ve never seen Bologna, but I know it well, even if it’s probably my own imaginary Bologna. It’s a big city: almost three hours.

I know that, because once I tuned to the CB radio of a truck and followed it for the whole time it was within the range of my scanner. The truck driver never stopped talking on it, from the moment he first appeared on the scanner until he disappeared. He talked his way across the city.

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