Vincenzo Malinconico

Malinconico is a Neapolitan lawyer without a single case. He goes through the motions every day, leaving for the office punctually, shuffling papers when he gets to the studio he shares with a group of un-gainfully employed professionals like him. His personal life is a shambles: his wife has left him, his two teenage children are rife with adolescent angst and busy screwing their lives up royally. And his professional life, as noted, is nonexistent. But one day a miracle occurs. Indeed, two! The first is that he is assigned a case. And not any old case! He has been named the defense attorney for a member of the Neapolitan underground, Mimmo the Burzone. The second miracle bears the name Alessandra Persiana-the most beautiful woman to ever grace the Neapolitan courthouses -who, it appears, has fallen in love with Malinconico. However, the real miracle for readers in this rollicking novel is the hilarious and eccentric voice of Vincenzio Malinconico. The novel orbits around the bizarre and irresistible mind of Malinconico, a mind that pauses to contemplate every aspect of the life he sees before him, the life he has lived, his memories and his future; a voice that seduces, entertains, and moves the reader from the first page to the last.

He makes you laugh, though you can never be quite sure why. He's affable enough, of course, but it's not so much that. He is both a kind of halfwit and a genius, flippant and profound, chaotic and yet possessed of a Zen-like calm. He's easily distracted but tends to hound-dog every thought until he has it by the throat. His conversation is labyrinthine but he is capable of moments of blinding lucidity. The thing is, you can't help but love him. He is Vincenzo Malinconico, an underemployed lawyer whose wife has sort of left him ("he's the kind of man you marry not once but twice, and leave both times"), whose teenage children worry him to death, and whose profession mostly consists in appearing as if he has one. In this sequel to I Hadn't Understood, a Neapolitan mafia boss has been kidnapped by a mild-mannered computer engineer who holds the camorrista responsible for the accidental death of his son. The engineer plans to conduct an impromptu trial on live television during which he will list the various crimes of the accused, sentencing him before a captivated national audience and executing him accordingly. The standoff between law enforcement officers and the kidnapper becomes a tragi-comic reality show. The only hope of a happy ending rests with Vincenzio Malinconico, Neapolitan lawyer, poster-cliché for the proverbial mid-life crisis, and inveterate flaneur. He hardly has a reputation for decisiveness, but now is called upon to play a decisive role in resolving this drama in course with, hopefully, no loss of life, his own included.