Customer Reviews

The Day of the Owl and Equal Danger (Paladin Books)

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Imagine a time before the Sopranos, before the Godfather, and before Mario Puzo. The mafia, particularly in Italy, was virtually virgin territory in literature - no one dared write about it. Leonardo Sciascia (pronounced "Sha-Sha") was one of the first to break the code of silence.

In the Day of the Owl -- a short, quick read that provides an excellent snapshot of a Sicilian village in the mid-20th century -- Sciascia transplants to unruly Sicily a northern Italian police inspector who has too much integrity to look the other way when a man is shot dead at dawn in a Siclian piazza. Witnesses quickly disavow that they saw anything at all, but rumors begin to circulate. Our hero, Captain Bellodi, is determined to see the assassin punished. But the closer he gets to the truth, the higher the intervention from "His Excellency" and other well-placed members of society.

Sciascia's genius in the Day of the Owl is his subtle description of how the "so-called" mafia manages to keep its operations quiet, ranging from eliminating those who may speak up to using faulty logic to allow for plausible deniability. Can you honestly believe, one mafiosi asks the captain, that an organization so vast, so organized and so powerful can actually exist? Would the police not be able to discover and dismantle such an organization? Would there not be public testimony in court cases? The mafia is clearly just a rumor.

Sciascia's characters are strong, particularly fish-out-of-water Bellodi. On leave in his native Parma, Bellodi considers abandoning what he fears is a futile assignment in Sicily. He quickly decides to return, recognizing that Sicily has won him over, just as the Day of the Owl will win over the reader.

Leonard Sciascia's Sicily is a dark place, even while it basks under a hot noonday sun. In "The Day of the Owl", Sciascia's native Sicily (he was born in Racalmuto, Sicily in 1921) is a place where there is crime but no punishment, at least no official punishment. Sciascia's Sicily is a place where the code of silence trumps the penal code and where crimes are seen by all and witnessed by none. In Sciascia's Sicily the mafia enjoys such a symbiotic relationship with the local and federal power elite that they are effectively an independent if unacknowledged branch of government. This is not fertile ground for a detective investigating a murder but very fertile ground for a writer such as Sciascia.

"Day of the Owl" opens with a murder. A local building contractor is shot down with a sawn-off shotgun as he runs for a bus on Saturday morning. Captain Bellodi, recently arrived from the mainland, is assigned the case. Since a sawn-off shotgun is the typical instrument of mafia-ordered murders Bellodi's inclination is to look for an organized crime link. It doesn't take long for Bellodi to figure out the motive behind the murder, the identity of the murderer, and the identity of the man who ordered the murder. But knowledge alone does not equate to evidence and as the story progresses we see Bellodi painstakingly and diligently obtain the evidence necessary to indict the perpetrators. Bellodi's task is not an easy one. In addition to the wall of silence that meets him as he begins his investigation, his status as a fair-haired mainlander marks him as even more of an outsider.

Sciascia takes a multi-layered approach to telling his story. His narrative of the crime and investigation is straightforward, terse, and engaging. At the same time we are provided a glimpse into Sicily through the eyes of a newcomer, Bellodi. Bellodi the pale northerner is transformed during this book. He is at once horrified by the corruption and the code of silence that thwarts him every step of the way. At the same time we see him discover something else in this place that he finds irresistible. This evolution reaches a climax when Bellodi interrogates the mafia Don he believes to be responsible for a cold-blooded killing. There comes a point where the Don refers to Bellodi as a `real man'. There is a lot of meaning invested in that remark and Bellodi is transfixed by it. Bellodi is drawn to Sicily the way someone may be drawn to a dangerous lover. You go into the relationship knowing it will be stormy and dangerous but it is irresistible. I couldn't help but think that Bellodi and "Day of the Owl" was a great vehicle through which Sciascia could explore his own strong feelings for his native place.

Leonardo Sciascia's "Day of the Owl" is a fascinating book on many levels. It works as a good piece of detective fiction and also works well as a keen and loving (warts and all) look at life in Sicily in the 1960s. 4.5 stars. Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

If you enjoy "The Day of the Owl" you will also probably enjoy Equal Danger (New York Review Books Classics).

Leonardo Sciascia's short novel is both a crime story and more; it is also a poem of love and despair for his native Sicily. It opens with a man shot dead in a town square while running for a bus. It looks like a Mafia hit, but nobody will talk; all the potential witnesses have conveniently forgotten anything they might have seen. But Captain Bellodi, who has come down from his native Parma to take charge of the local carabinieri, soon achieves results with his unusual approach to investigation, and before long arrests three suspects, one of them a man of some prominence in the town.

These sections describing the investigation are not so different from what you would expect in any well-written police procedural, and this one is indeed well-written. But they alternate with a series of dialogues between unnamed but mostly highly-placed individuals commenting at a distance on the news coming out of Sicily about Bellodi's actions. Starting as an almost comedic device, these conversations gradually reveal the extent of the support that the Mafia enjoys, its root tendrils reaching even to the highest levels of government in Rome. The whodunnit aspect is essentially over before the halfway point in the book; the tension comes from whether Bellodi can make the charges stick, and what the nameless others can do to prevent him.

Bellodi is an unusually likeable detective, intelligent, humane, and with none of the quirks that are so often attached to his confreres in the police fiction genre. But these qualities may not be enough to combat a pattern of crime so deeply embedded in the blood and bones of Sicily. Indeed Sciascia himself, in a coda to the book, remarks that the novel he published is only a shadow of the novel he originally wrote, for fear of stirring up retaliation. "I was unable to write with that complete freedom to which every writer is entitled (and I call myself a writer only because I happen to put pen to paper)." It is neither a deep book nor especially hard-hitting, but what Sciascia wrote with that pen is eminently readable, and we can easily guess the rest.

It would not be seriously misleading to categorize THE DAY OF THE OWL as "crime fiction", but it is more than the typical crime fiction of entertainment and escapism. In truth, it transcends the genre and stakes a claim to being serious literature.

The novel, written in 1962, tells the story of the police investigation of a murder in a small town in Sicily by means of a double dose of lupara ("wolf-shot" or a cartridge loaded with five to seven ball-bearings, one of the mafia's signature methods of execution). Two more murders occur: one of an inadvertent witness, the other of an informant. The investigator is Captain Bellodi, transferred to Sicily from Parma and beyond the tentacles and traditions of the mafia. Keenly intelligent and scrupulously polite, Bellodi is a wily interrogator; without ever resorting to violence he manages to solve the murders and extract confessions. But in Sicily, confessions are not enough, as Bellodi learns after he is mysteriously ordered to return to Parma before he can see through to a conclusion prosecution of the murders in Sicily.

The novel reminds me somewhat of the more recent series by Andrea Camilleri, also set in Sicily and featuring Inspector Montalbano. But the three Montalbano novels I have read pander to many of the tropes of detective crime fiction, confining them to their genre. In contrast, in THE DAY OF THE OWL Sciascia does not resort to sex, sensationalistic violence, vulgar language, or a lusty and sexually irresistible detective as his hero. Beyond that, what elevates THE DAY OF THE OWL is the quality of the writing and the picture the novel provides of post-WWII Sicily.

This volume contains an excellent six-page introduction by George Scialabba. From it I learned that author Leonardo Sciascia (b. 1921, d. 1989) was one of the first authors, and also one of the most relentless, to write about the mafia and its pervasive corruption of civilized life in Sicily. The introduction quotes Sciascia writing that "all my books taken together form * * * a Sicilian book which probes the wounds of past and present and develops as the history of the continuous defeat of reason and of those who have been personally overcome and annihilated in that defeat." That statement certainly comprehends THE DAY OF THE OWL. The book also evinces a concern that the Sicilian "government of the lupara" might engulf all of Italy as well. Then there is the matter of indirect censorship: in a "coda" to the novel, Sciascia writes that in other Western nations (the U.S., England, France, Sweden), a writer might portray "imbecile generals, corrupt judges and crooked police", but not in Italy; to steer clear of charges of libel and slander, he had to painstakingly revise and prune his novel, so that, in the end, "I was unable to write it with that complete freedom to which every writer is entitled."

THE DAY OF THE OWL amounts to a thoroughgoing condemnation of Sicilian society - from the mafia, to the cowed public that lets it dominate them, to corrupt politicians, to irresponsible journalists. But the singular achievement of Sciascia in the book is that the story always comes first.

The New York Review Books Classics series brings another excellent writer and storyteller to the attention of a wider audience with the publication of 'The Day of the Owl' by Leonardo Sciascia. 'The Day of the Owl' opens with the murder of an honest Sicilian contractor - on a public street in front of a bus load of commuters as well as a street peddler. When the caribinieri arrive to question the witnesses, they all suffer a failure of memory. When asked `who fired the shots?' the peddler responds with apparent astonishment: "Why, has there been a shooting?"

Captain Bellodi takes over the investigation and determines the likely involvement of the Mafia in eliminating a businessman who would not play by their crooked rules. The progress of Bellodi's investigation is intermingled by Sciascia with behind-the-scenes discussions among the Mafiosi and their political and business partners. The greater Bellodi's progress the higher the level of discussion and the greater the anxiety. Bellodi brilliantly attempts to maneuver three participants, each at a higher rung than the one before, in the murder into incriminating one another. If Bellodi obtains the confessions will even that evidence withstand the corruption of a rigged system of justice?

Sciascia sweeps the reader along in this brief exciting novel, yet still manages to explore what The Observer called the "silent complicity and self-deception" of Sicilian and Italian society. The reader may also enjoy Sciascia's Equal Danger (New York Review Books Classics), To Each His Own (New York Review Books Classics), and the The Wine-Dark Sea (New York Review Books Classics). Highly recommended.

Leonardo Sciascia's "The Day of the Owl" is a beautifully written mystery/novella that gives the reader a look at the complexity and xenophobia that have characterized Sicily to some degree throughout its history. The translation of this work is superb--the language is evocative and insightful throughout. "Owl" is not only a standout for its genre, it's literature of high quality. The book has made me want to read all of the Sciascia books in the New York Review of Books series.

I liked this one less than "To Each His Own". The main character, the inspector form the mainland, seem to have less flesh on his literary bones than the teacher in "To Each His Own", (but then, I'm a teacher, and not a cop, so it's natural for me to be more sympathetic to him). The ending, I think, is not as strong. However, this book has more of a political punch than the other one. It is an indictment of a society that lives with corruption at the highest levels of the state.

Sicily in the mid-20th century and an honest man is gunned down in the street in plain view of dozens of witnesses - but no one saw a thing. Such is the extent of the fear the mafia exerts over everyone - except to outsiders. Captain Bellodi is assigned this frustrating case and quickly realises that everyone covers for everyone else for fear of being next on the list of the Mafiosi. Until a lucky break will lead him to head of the crime family... but will he survive the consequences?

Leonardo Sciasca does a decent job of establishing an atmosphere of claustrophobia to this lovely rural landscape cut through with bullets and blood but when the book becomes a police procedural, the writing and story become a bit dry. The main character Bellodi spends most of his time trying to incriminate the criminals against each other in interrogation rooms and it's a lot of "he said this, he said that" kind of stuff. If you're a big crime fiction fan maybe you'll enjoy it but chances are it's not nearly as sophisticated as the kind of interrogation techniques used today.

It was interesting to see that people of this time weren't aware of the mafia on any large scale and that many in government questioned its existence. Even when the book came out in 1961 I don't think people were aware of the mafia like people today are. The dialogue is the best feature of the book, Sciasca's writing is at its best when the dialogue between characters is the central focus. Other than that, there wasn't much to the story and it expects in much the way you would imagine it would. One annoying aspect was the inclusion of so many Italian words. Why translate the vast majority of them into English and then leave others behind for the reader to guess what it means? Strange choice.

"The Day of the Owl" isn't the best mafia book out there but does highlight the mob's presence (important for its time), its corrupting hand in national (and international) government as well as local politics, and does all of this in microcosm to a single killing. But it does so in a way most 21st century readers have experienced before in better films and tv shows and books, even computer games, so its impact is lesser on readers today. Certainly on this reader.

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A great crime novel with deep social and political roots. It is a captivating crime investigtion novel that opens up a fascinating political and social universe in Sicily with its roots extending to the highest political levels.