On 16 March 1978, Aldo Moro, former Italian Prime Minister, was ambushed in Rome. Within three minutes the gang killed all five members of his escort and bundled Moro into one of three getaway cars. An hour later the Red Brigades announced that Moro was in their hands; on 18 March they said he would be tried in a 'people's court of justice'. Seven weeks later Moro's body was discovered in the boot of a Renault parked in the crowded centre of Rome. In this book, Leonardo Sciasica, a master ...

In the piazza, a man lies dead. No one will say if they witnessed his killing. This presents a challenge to the investigating officer, a man who earnestly believes in the values of a democratic and modern society. Indeed, his enquiries are soon blocked off by a wall of silence and vested interests; he must work against the community to save it and expose the truth.The narrative moves on two levels: that of the investigator, who reveals a chain of savage crimes; and that of the bystanders a...

The Benedictine whisked a brush of multicoloured feathers over the top of the book, puffed out his plump cheeks like the god of winds in an old nautical map, blew black dust from the leather cover, and, with a shiver of what in the circumstances seemed delicate trepidation, laid the volume open on the table.Palermo, 1783: The barons pursue feuds and petty plotting. Their wives indulge in forbidden French novels. And the porcine abbot Vella, eager to curry favour with Naple...

The expression 'Sicilian uncle' has the same sense in Italian as 'Dutch uncle' does in English, but with sinister overtones of betrayal and inconstancy. The four novellas in Sicilian Uncles, originally published in 1958, are political thrillers of a kind - the first fruits of Sciascia's maturity. In these stories, illusions about ideology and history are lost in mirth, suffering and abandoned innocence. Each novella has its historical moment: the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Spa...

District Attorney Varga is shot dead while picking a sprig of jasmine. Then Judge Sanza is killed. Then Judge Azar. Is this string of murders an individual vendetta or a more sinister plot? The charming Inspector Rogas is determined to find out. The pursuit of truth and justice are Rogas's vocation, but his work is frustrated by a system which defies his understanding. He needs a key, a way in, a map, and he is sure that his chief suspect Cres can provide it...The book, written in ...

Here are some of Sciascia's greatest stories - brief and haunting, the realist tradition at its best. In one tale a couple of men talk, cynically yet earnestly, about the etymology of the word 'mafia' - who they are, and why their interest is so piqued by the word, becomes apparent with frightening clarity. In another story a group of peasants are taken on board ship and promised that they will be put ashore illegally at Trenton, New Jersey; after a long time at sea, their landfall is far ...

Secret deals, powerful men and murder - One Way or Another is a chillingly prophetic work. The Knight and Death features a nameless (and apparently terminally ill) detective investigating the murder of a lawyer believed to have been killed by a mysterious revolutionary group. The detective thinks otherwise and sets out to prove that powerful business interests were involved, with the revolutionary group invented to cover up the real reasons behi...