"Bandit Love"

This crime novel by Massimo Carlotto is an easy but compelling read. If you have an airline flight and want to avoid buying four newspapers and a crappy bestseller, order this from Amazon in advance. It's well written with a good translation, crime noir as they say but the protagonist is just as the one's in Andrea Camilleri's books. In this type of fiction that means that the author reflects his own mortality and his own aging in the plight of his subjects.

It's good stuff. Plan ahead. Don't read the Cincinnati paper or something from numb nuts like James Patterson.

Once again I retract. Obviously James Patterson is a fine businessperson, and maybe just a fine person, but there is better reading out there.

Massimo Carlotto - not pretty or complicated stuff, well written, and this one is a wealth of real knowledge on the Eastern European mafia, Kosovo in particular. It is so believable to me because the center is Pec, a town in Kosovo that I wandered into in 1971. When my two Georgetown friends and I drove into the town on a dirt road all of the children seemed to celebrate, the atmosphere was friendly, the area was destitute. It was like a parade coming in, kids and young adults patting our Renualt 4 and cheering. Our hotel plumbing system consisted of trenches down the hallways, turds passing by. That's the truth. We played spades and drank whatever home brew licorice liquor they served there. The people looked tough there, but we were unusual enough to be safe or one of my barrel chested friends looked tough enough to give second thoughts(RIP Dickie). We had been lost on dirt roads from Maceondia, had wandered into or near Albania, through gypsy tent camps, driving near one lane precipices, too near. We took a two day rest.

Carlotto cannot be far off. This is good bandit territory. The U.S. supported the establishment of the most powerful drug mafia in Europe. Serbia was evil, but there were not saints in the former Yugoslavia.

try this book.