Observer
“Part legal thriller, part insight into a man fighting his own demons. Every character in Carofiglio’s fiction has a story to tell and they are always worth hearing. As the author himself is an anti-mafia prosecutor, this powerfully affecting novel benefits from veracity as well as tight writing.”
The Daily Mail
“At one level an exciting courtroom thriller, but what places it in a superior league is the portrayal of a slice of Italian society not normally encountered in crime fiction and an immensely appealing flawed hero.”
The Times
REASONABLE DOUBTS
Gianrico Carofiglio
Counsel for the defence Guido Guerrieri is asked to handle the appeal of Fabio Paolicelli, who has been sentenced to sixteen years for drug smuggling. The odds are stacked against the accused: not only the fact that he initially confessed to the crime, but also his past as a neo-Fascist thug. It is only the intervention of Paolicelli’s beautiful half-Japanese wife that finally overcomes Guerrieri’s reluctance.
Reasonable Doubts
, Carofiglio’s third novel featuring Guerrieri, follows on from the critical and commercial success of
Involuntary Witness
and
A Walk in the Dark
.
PRAISE FOR
REASONABLE DOUBTS
“The role of lawyer Guido Guerrieri is to take on impossible cases that have little chance of success. The lawyer accepts this case only because he’s fallen in lust with the prisoner’s wife; his efforts to prove his client’s innocence bring him into dangerous conflict with Mafia interests. Everything a legal thriller should be.”
The Times
This novel is hard-boiled and sun-dried in equal parts. Guerrieri stumbles into a case involving old enmities, a femme fatale and a murky conspiracy. But where Philip Marlowe would be knocking back bourbon and listening to the snap of fist on jaw, Guerrieri prefers Sicilian wine and Leonard Cohen… The local colour is complemented by snappy legal procedural writing which sends the reader tumbling through the clockwork of a tightly wound plot.”
The Financial Times
“Carofiglio, until recently an anti-Mafia prosecutor in southern Italy, is particularly well placed to write legal thrillers, and he does so with considerable brio, humour and skill.”
The Daily Mail
BITTER LEMON PRESS
First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by Bitter Lemon Press, 37 Arundel Gardens, London W11 2LW Reprinted 2006, 2007, 2010
First published in Italian as
Testimone inconsapevole
by Sellerio editore, Palermo, 2002
This edition is published with the financial assistance of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
© Sellerio editore, Palermo, 2002 English translation © Patrick Creagh, 2005
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of Patrick Creagh and Gianrico Carofiglio have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Acknowledgements
P. 86: ‘The Boxer’, Words & Music by Paul Simon © Paul Simon, 1968. Used by Permission of Music Sales Limited. All rights reserved. International Copyright Secured. P. 71: ‘The River’ by Bruce Springsteen © Bruce Springsteen, 1980. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. P. 85: ‘Please Forgive Me’ © David Gray, 1998. Reprinted with kind permission of Chrysalis Music Ltd. Extracts from the English Translation of Antoine Saint-Exupéry’s
Le Petit Prince
(
The Little Prince
) on pp. 98, 100 are © Katherine Woods, 1945.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978-1-904-73875-6
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Printed and bound by Cox & Wyman Ltd