GIORGIO SCERBANENCO was born in 1911 of a Ukrainian father and an Italian mother. Until he was sixteen he lived in Rome. The family then moved to Milan and they were so poor he could not finish school. He worked as a laborer, in street markets, and as a shop assistant until he began writing short stories for magazines. His success was immediate and he wrote hundreds of stories until he moved on to writing novels and mysteries.
In his hero, Duca Lamberti, he set himself to create a contemporary Italian detective-hero who would be more than a police inspector, more even than an Italian-style Maigret. Duca trusts in patience and common sense to bring the criminals to justice. A calm, philosophic-minded bourgeois, he is hounded by a sense of justice but feels only sadness when he triumphs over the evil men he despises.

Set in Milan
(Lombardia)

THEME

Italian Author

Out of Print

Duca and the Milan Murders

(Translated from the Italian by Eileen Ellenbogen)

JACKET NOTES: A foggy night in Milan, a car halted at the edge of a canal, inside a drunken man and woman, outside an American girl who pushes the car and its occupants into the murky waters . . . . But it is many weeks before those deaths are tied up with others.
Philosophical, weary Duca Lamberti, a doctor disbarred from his profession because of a conviction for euthanasia, works with his friend, Police Inspector Carrua, against the violent underworld of the city. A flashy young man who arranges a small operation for a woman and a green case carrying a new Czech submachine gun involve Duca in a complicated case of corruption. Duca waits for people to involve themselves, and when they do he finds brutal murder, an elaborate organization, and a vital missing element. Only by the aid of the American girl and a return to the days of World War Il can the final mystery be solved.
In 1968 the novel, in its French translation, received in Paris the Grand Prix du Roman Policier.
(© Walker and Company)