The publisher Sellerio has launched a series of crime anthologies centered on specific themes: it began with Calcio in giallo and now tackles the subject of travel.
It is an excellent idea, but Gimenez-Bartlett, Malvaldi, Manzini, Recami, Rebecchi, and Savatteri ought to have applied themselves, rather than simply “dashing it off,” striving instead to cultivate the link between the assigned theme and the noir genre.
This was not the case; the results are dull, banal, and pointless stories.
Let us dwell on the only one worth discussing.
In Gaetano Savatteri’s short story, La segreta alchimia, Saverio is an unemployed Sicilian; he has written a moderately successful novel and has a girlfriend who works in Milan.
He finds himself in a supermarket with his friend Pippo, pretending to shop for a television just to pass the time.
Unable to resist the temptation of a promotional deal, he buys some Duracell batteries, turns out to be the millionth customer, and wins a prize trip to Prague.
Thus, entirely by accident, he finds himself on a flight to the “magic” city, accompanied by his friend Pippo and bound for his girlfriend, who awaits him in the Czech city.
The algorithm that randomly assigns seats (an “electronic god,” a modern Jupiter) places a stunning girl next to Saverio;

as the engineer Gadda used to say, unexpected catastrophes are never the consequence or the effect, if you will, of a single cause, but are like a vortex

, Larisa (“a high-class escort or one of Putin’s spies...?”) sweeps the young Sicilian off his feet; with

the movement of her red-painted lips, (...) the pressure of her arm, (...) her crossed legs

, she leads him to reflect

on the destiny of peoples, the dictatorship of the proletariat, the gulags, Stalin...

, which is to say, on all those historical events that made it possible to

sit serenely beside the splendid Bolshevik comrade Larisa

.
Yet the “god of low-cost travel” can be exceedingly spiteful: Larisa is an international spy carrying a flash drive loaded with crucial industrial secrets—a drive she slips into Saverio’s jacket to keep it from falling into the hands of other shady traffickers.
The vacation turns into a thriller, complete with all its typical ingredients: stakeouts, trashed hotel rooms, nocturnal escapades that are risky but not excessively so, the indifference of the Czech police, and the investigations of the Italian authorities, culminating in a denouement surprising in its sheer prosaicness.
There is little real suspense—Savatteri is no le Carré—but above all, the plot is not what interests him: he wants to recount how a young Italian, who fancies himself quite the hotshot, can be duped by the first female fellow traveler who comes along, provided she is slender, blonde, and buxom.

Why write crime stories about travel if one has nothing to say? The rules of engagement were clear and simple: situate a noir story within the context of a journey, whether for business or leisure, in a neighboring or distant country, in a great metropolis or an exotic setting—in short, wherever the author pleased.
Well, the authors produced an utter fiasco: perhaps they have never traveled, or perhaps, more simply, they just couldn’t be bothered.
I suspect it was an act of rebellion: one cannot assign a schoolmasterly task to a writer, penning them within predefined boundaries; the “prompt,” evoking memories of the classroom, withers the imagination and creativity.

Why not read it? It is dull and banal: the worst possible failing for a mystery and a travel story alike.

Traveling in Giallo