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Copertina del libro I Kill

Finished reading on: January 30, 2005

Publisher

Baldini & Castoldi

Year

2006

pages

1676

Read in

Italiano

Rating: Medio-alto

I Kill

Title of the original version reviewed: «Io uccido»

AI Translation Notice: This review was translated from the original Italian using artificial intelligence. Book quotes and excerpts are translated interpretations and will not match the author's original English phrasing or official published translations.

The novel concerns a string of murders committed in Monte Carlo by a psychopath who slaughters a series of celebrities in the grip of a vengeful delirium, seeking to restore a face to his brother, born ill-fated and murdered by their father.
An American agent finds himself heading the investigation amidst a tangle of subplots and plot twists.
It is a quintessential genre novel, echoing the style and narrative pace of books by Ludlum, Le Carré, and the like: a detective story that relies neither on setting (here reduced to the bare essentials) nor on in-depth character development, nor, ultimately, on suspense.
Instead, it relies on narrative velocity and, in this case, on pleasant, lucid prose.
It is a good book, perhaps overly long (as novels of this genre tend to be), redundant (for instance, from the discovery of the killer’s identity up to his apprehension), hurried (in how the protagonist uncovers the killer’s identity), and ultimately rather implausible regarding the final confrontation between the protagonist and the “villainous” general.
Other passages firmly capture the reader's interest and attention: the initial murder aboard the boat, the phone calls to the radio station, the French commissaire’s search in Aix-en-Provence, and, finally, the killer's capture.
At last, Italian literature too has entered a literary genre that has enjoyed—and continues to enjoy—immense success both abroad and in Italy.