Wednesday 28 May, 6.30pm
The Darkest Winter by Carlo Lucarelli (2025, Open Borders Press)
The author in conversation with Claire Armitstead
Acclaimed Italian crime writer Carlo Lucarelli will be joined by Claire Armitstead to discuss his new historical thriller The Darkest Winter (in the English translation by Joseph Farrell), the prequel to his De Luca trilogy, set in Fascist Bologna in 1944.
In November 1944, in the worst winter ever known in Bologna, in the depths of the war, the bomb-scarred streets are home to starving refugees who have fled the advancing Allies. The Fascist Black Brigades, the officers of the S.S. and the partisans of the Italian Resistance compete for control of the city streets in bloody skirmishes. Comandante De Luca, who has proved himself “the most brilliant investigator” in Bologna but who is now unwillingly working for the Political Police in a building that doubles as a torture facility, finds himself in trouble when three murders land on his desk: a professor shot through the eye, an engineer beaten to death, and a German corporal left to be gnawed on by rats in a flooded cellar. De Luca must rapidly unravel all three cases with ten lives on the line: ten Italian hostages who will face a Nazi ring squad if the corporal’s killing is not solved to the German command’s satisfaction. As he navigates a web of personal and political motivations – his life increasingly at risk – De Luca will not stop uncovering the dangerous secrets concealed in the frozen heart of his city.
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Carlo Lucarelli was born in Parma in 1960. While researching for his thesis on the history of Italian law enforcement, he became intrigued by the Italian police force’s role in the political upheavals of the 1940s during and after the Second World War. From this seed grew his character De Luca. Lucarelli hosted a popular Italian television programme on unsolved crimes and mysteries.
Claire Armitstead is a former literary editor of the Guardian, where her work included writing culture leaders and hosting the Guardian books podcast. She is the editor of a Tale of Two Londons: Stories from a fractured city. She is a vice president of English Pen and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.