A Fine Line

When you read a book billed as a legal thriller, that is what you expect. Not something that is more borderline-philosophical and metaphysical, with not much action and a lot of moody thinking. In the southern Italian city of Bari, a prominent judge is accused of corruption by taking bribes from the mafia. He enlists the help of local defense attorney, Guido Guerrieri, and his assistant, Annapaola Doria, to help clear his name. What should follow is a race against the clock, going into the seedy underworld of Italian courthouses and mafia bosses. Instead what we get is an attorney that is probably crazy since he hears voices from the objects around him, and regularly talks to them, and a plot that moves at a glacial pace for such a short book. It is not at all suspenseful, and the long passages that diverge are both boring and distract from what little plot there is. It takes a long time for even the plot to get started, around page 80, which is a very long time for a 280-page book.