Carte Blanche

April 1945, Italy. The final days of the Fascist Republic. Commissario De Luca is heading up a murder investigation that draws him into the private lives of the rich and powerful as World War II reaches its frantic climax. The regime's days are numbered and its disgraced leaders know it. Their desperate retreats and futile struggles for pieces of the post-war pie are making a regular cop's job awfully hard to do. With Mussolini's house of cards ready to collapse, De Luca faces a world mired in sadistic sex, dirty money, drugs, and murder.
Carte Blanche, the first installment in Carlo Lucarelli's "De Luca Trilogy," is much more than a first-rate crime story. It is also an investigation into the workings of justice in a state that is crumbling under the weight of profound historic change. The "De Luca Trilogy" is set during one of the 20th century's seminal moments and describes a nation's ardent search to rediscover its moral bearings after being torn in two by civil strife and political corruption. Threatened by the machinations of a decaying political class, De Luca (himself reminiscent of the disenchanted Dashiell Hammett PI) is a simple man doing a tough job as best he can. Even after closing his investigation, he will still have to face one final, fateful decision.