Three, Imperfect Number

By Patrizia Rinaldi

The report that lands on Commissario Martusciello’s desk is unlike any other. The lifeless body of the Neapolitan singer Jerry Vialdi, a.k.a. Gennaro Mangiavento, has been found at the Naples football stadium; another corpse, this time a Jane Doe, has been discovered in the Bentegodi Stadium in Verona, hundreds of miles away. The bodies were left in a fetal position, there are no signs of physical violence, the method and the madness behind it appear to hide some unutterable secret. Conclusion: a daring challenge left by a psychopath for the police. who are stabbing in the dark with no idea where to begin. All except for superintendent Blanca Occhiuzzi: beautiful, blind from birth, forced by the dark that envelops her to perceive the world through only four senses, she feels the fear in people; she feels their guilt and their innocence. It is she who takes Martusciello by the hand, guiding him into the mind of a murderer with her sensual intuition. It is as if he were the blind one. Allusive, mysterious, rife with double-meanings, saturated with an exotic almost esoteric musicality, Patrizia Rinaldi’s radically new way of writing recounts a captivating story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Aug 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781609451677

Patrizia Rinaldi

Patrizia Rinaldi lives and works in Naples, where she was born in 1960. She is the author of numerous works of crime fiction published in Italy. Three, Imperfect Number is her first work to appear in English.

Reviews for Three, Imperfect Number

[smik_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I remember some discussion when this book was first published about whether it is a novel, as the publisher claims, or a collection of short stories.The setting is an underbelly of life in Melbourne. While the stories do appear to be in sequential order, the actual timing is not very clear. In addition there are characters and incidents that connect some of the stories. Sometimes John Dorn takes on some seriously unsavoury tasks, at other times he appears to be following a thread that he thinks will earn him some money. He is constantly in need of money. Many of the jobs he carries out do not yield any income at all. Over the period covered by the stories John Dorn's own life goes into a downward spiral. Mostly the stories are very dark, with an underlying black humour.So in a sense there is a underlying narrative through which we see Dorn's character fleshed out, the overall story progresses, and various issues are resolved. So does that make it a novel?This is the second time I have read this novel. See my earlier review here. I suspect that I haven't warmed to the novel any more second time around than I did on first reading, although I recognise that it is cleverly constructed. Probably it just isn't my cup of tea.

[mjlivi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An entertaining read working within a fairly formulaic noir genre - the main character is a cynical small-time detective who gradually descends into a mess of drinking and bad choices over ten grim cases. It's good fun to read, but it felt like a bit of a retread of ground that's been well covered even in my fairly limited crime fiction reading. The interesting structure - each chapter is a distinct case linked up so that the book as a whole maintains a reasonably linear narrative - was a neat way to illustrate the unwinding of the main character, but it did mean that none of the cases had much heft. In some ways this is probably realistic for the kind of small time private eye work that the book is about, but it left me a bit unsatisfied.

The lack of any female characters of substance really jumped out at me too - I'm sure Lovitt's not alone in the genre, but it felt particularly lacking to me (possibly because I've spent the last few months churning through the Stella Prize long list).

[quibee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Dorn is a small time private inquiry agent who doesn't make much of a living, but is very good at what he does. He's someone with a heart that gradually gets ground down by people and the work he takes on. The stories are set in Melbourne, Australia.
This is a series of ten interlocking stories where we watch Dorn's self-destruction because of the result of one of his investigations.
Zane Lovitt has a very good writing style. He gives the stories a bit of a twist and has a dry sense of humour. Definitely noir.

[sarahstenhouse · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short stories all set in Melbourne with the same private enquiry agent. Reminded me of Shane Maloney. Entertaining. Read on e-book