Commissario Balistreri Trilogy

On 11 July, 1982, Elisa Sordi was beautiful. Commissario Michele Balistreri was fearless. Italy was victorious. A killer was waiting.... On 9 July, 2006, with Sordi’s case 24 years cold, and Balistreri haunted by guilt and regret, Italian victory returned. And so did Sordi’s killer.... But this time Michele Balistreri would be ready. This time he would fear no evil.

On 11 July 1982, Elisa Sordi was beautiful. Commissario Michele Balistreri was fearless. Italy was victorious. A killer was waiting. On 9 July 2006, with Sordi's case 24 years cold, and Balistreri haunted by guilt and regret, Italian victory returned. And so did Sordi's killer. But this time Michele Balistreri would be ready. This time he would fear no evil.

Tripoli, 1960s: During the years in which post-colonial Libya fell prey to the sprawling greed of the West, Michele Balistreri suffered a succession of blows that would scar him for life. The death of his mother; the unspeakable horror that befell his best friend's family; his father's role in Gaddafi's ascent to power; and the innocent blood pact that would corrupt the course of his future.

In the 1960s, post-colonial Libya fell prey to the sprawling industrial greed of the West, driven by the discovery of oil. While the modern quarter of Tripoli, built by the Italians, was small and affluent, the rest of the city - like the rest of the nation - was left to fend for itself amid the arid, sandy stretches of North Africa. As tensions mounted between Eastern and Western ideals, terror began to supplant justice, and acts of religiously motivated violence began to fill some of Tripoli's darkest corners.

The memory of 31 August 1969 has been at the back of Commissario Michele Balistreri’s mind for over four decades. It was not only the day that preceded Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s seizure of power in Balistreri’s birthplace of Libya but that on which his beloved mother, Natalia, fell to her death and the resulting suicide verdict that Balistreri has always suspected to be a flagrant cover-up for her murder.