Ignorantia juris non excusat: The trial and the affirmation of the Italian legal thriller

You throw an innocent person in there, get ‘em caught up in a conspiracy and you get ‘em out. (Grisham in Pryor, 1994: 14)

The connection between literature and law has been widely debated. Numerous studies have pointed out how literary and judicial practices seem characterized by common methods of narrative organization and communication of experiences. Judicial devices such as confessions, testimonies, interrogatories, legal interpretations, and judgments are, of course, essential parts of what constitutes literary practices. Hence, literature and law are conceived and articulated through words that have the aim of constructing realities. They are both subject to the rules of rhetoric and they both comply with aesthetic principles. Law as well as literature produces worlds which either help us make more sense of the one we actually inhabit or point to worlds we couldn’t envisage ourselves (Di Ciolla, 2009).

The purpose of this brief study survey is to investigate a specific way in which such discourses interact. In other words, what happens when literature relates to law? How is the relation between separate fields and cultural discourses shaped? What substantiates the connection between literary and juridical institutions? These are crucial questions for a critical study of the detective novel and crime fiction, which we cannot evade.

With particular reference to the institution of the trial, I will analyze the first novel by Gianrico Carofiglio, Testimone inconsapevole (2002). Specifically, I will investigate how a jurist-writer, introducing an internal point of view over the juridical system, operates a modification in the representation of the trial, dealing with the literary tradition as well as with law’s own representations. Furthermore, I will relate this specific attitude to the emergence of an entirely new category of writers risen from the complex reality of law administration.

In recent years, alongside Carofiglio, a considerable number of judges, public prosecutors, magistrates and police administrators have turned into successful genre fiction writers. It is therefore relevant to determine if and how this new wave of jurist-writers expresses new viewpoints on the relation between law and literature. The working hypothesis of this article is that the political and cultural importance acquired by the Italian Magistratura (the institution expressing the juridical power), as a result of a longstanding confrontation with the political power, is essential in determining the dispositions of these jurist-writers. From this perspective, the revival of the so-called legal thriller – a subgenre of thriller and crime fiction, in which the major characters are lawyers and where the system of justice itself is always a major part of the novel – must be inscribed within the context of a longstanding conflict between political and juridical power.

In recent years, some remarkable studies (Adamo, 1999; Berrè, 2014) have discussed the importance of the judicial novel within the Italian literary tradition, questioning its origins as well as its nature as a defined genre. Specifically, in her research, Sergia Adamo underlined the importance of the narrative rewriting of history conducted by the first judicial novels right after the process of Italian unification. Indeed, during the first two decades after the Risorgimento, many Italian novelists showed significant interest in the debates originated by famous trials covered by the media. Among the possible reasons for this exceptional curiosity, one could certainly include the growing importance of the debate within the new Italian juridical system, as well as the increased amount of space devoted by Italian media to some shocking and heinous cases.

The importance of the trial as a literary tool and a motor of narrative rewriting is particularly evident as we analyze several novels published during the last 30 years of the 19th century. A passionate reconstruction of disgraceful trials plays a significant role in many successful novels, such as Parmenio Bettoli’s Il processo Duranti (1874), Gerolamo Rovetta’s Il processo Montegù (1882), and the well-known novel Il processo di Frine by Edoardo Scarfoglio (1884). It is no surprise, then, to notice how many important writers started attending popular trials to find inspiration, seeing in the trial not only an effective instrument to represent the catharsis of human passions but also a moment of revelation of justice, being it human or divine. And, to a certain degree, the issue of justice characterized the work of many, including the verist writers Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana, the latter who centered some of his most well-known short stories (Alle assise, 1889 and Delitto ideale, 1902), as well as his most significant novel (Il Marchese di Roccaverdina, 1901), around a crime of passion and its consequent trial. Mention should also be made of another important novel, generally considered as the first work of crime fiction within the Italian literary tradition, Emilio De Marchi’s Il cappello del prete (1888).

In relation to this corpus of texts, some critics (Adamo, 2012; Ceserani, 2012) have argued for the existence of an Italian judiciary novel, a literary genre defined in fundamental opposition to the detective novel. Roughly, while in the “classical” detective novel the sequence of events is presented as an intricate puzzle that finds its resolution only in the last part, in the judicial novel events are presented to the reader from the very beginning, and then discussed multiple times, and eventually verified during the representation of the trial, to which is generally reserved great narrative space.

Over the last 20 years, the judicial novel has been the subject of renewed consideration by critics, and the very existence of this “genre,” its importance within the Italian tradition, as well as its formal characteristics have been extensively debated. Beyond the controversies on the classification of the judicial novel as a literary genre, it seems appropriate to underline how the representation of courts, lawyers, and trials has become one of the recurring tropes not only within the relatively limited context of so-called crime fiction but also for the contemporary narrative in general.

In this respect, Adamo again suggests directing our attention to a modification in the angle of representation of the law in Italian literature. Indeed, according to Adamo, during the 20th century, despite a growing clamor raised by debates connected to some famous trials, the core of literary representation seems to be the depiction of a problematic tension between law, literature, and justice (Adamo, 2009). In the decades that followed its first appearance within the Italian literary tradition, the spectacular representation of the trial tended to move to other means of communication such as newspapers and chronicles, later influencing in particular theatrical and cinematic production, and eventually invading television. Ultimately, the general dissemination of themes commonly related to justice further complicates any attempt to evoke a comprehensive and coherent corpus of texts that refer specifically to what might be defined as the judicial novel. Unquestionably, independent or not, the Italian mode of judicial fiction incorporates unique elements worth further analysis.

Once again it is Adamo (2009) who traces a line that connects various works, beginning with Alessandro Manzoni’s Storia della colonna infame (1843) intersecting the work of Leonardo Sciascia and partially influencing the literary production of Carlo Lucarelli and Marco Paolini. Though, as Adamo suggests, the element that connects these narratives would no longer be their approach to courtrooms and the procedural aspects of law, but rather their reflections on the relationship between justice, literature, and memory. More specifically, with reference to Giorgio Agamben’s reading of justice as “the handing on of the Forgotten” (Agamben, 1985: 80–81), Adamo underlines how the intersection between literature and law in the Italian tradition relates to the possibility of “giving voice to the Forgotten and its demand for justice.” (Adamo, 2009: 262, translation author's own) No surprise, then, to see the issues of obliviousness and justice as deeply connected to literature and its capacity for telling and re-telling forgotten stories. The interplay between law, literature, and justice, then, allows recovery not only of particular stories but, more importantly, of a collective history hidden by the mysteries of official reconstructions. This perspective explains the proliferation of narrations and re-narrations from the past. The judiciary perspective results in a particular kind of narration whose primary aim is to take advantage of records, documents, and testimonies, more so than reproducing them. This narration entails a number of devices that are constantly re-read and re-discovered in an ongoing desire to “make justice,” to revisit a story that seems to be made of omissions and deliberate forgetfulness. Consequently, the first kind of judicial novel, so predominant in the post-unification period, centered on courtroom papers and on the representation of the trial as a tool to organize human passions, would maintain a secondary importance in the 20th century, not only because a whole generation of writers has lot interest in the actual representation of trials, but also because such representations ended up being devoured by other media like television and newspapers, profoundly interested as they were in the spectacularization of trials.

Yet, if on the one side Adamo’s perspective has the advantage of evidencing a significant modification in the approaches of literary representation toward juridical procedures, on the other side it may end up underestimating the intense dialogue between media and, more importantly, the interference between different fields of power. Indeed, although fascinating, the interpretation of the judicial novel as a device dealing exclusively with the reproduction of a rewriting principle can only be partially useful in making sense of the affirmation, within the Italian literary tradition, of a totally new fiction genre labeled as the legal thriller.

In her historical recognition of the American legal thriller tradition, Marlyn Robinson pointed out how this genre should be seen as “a hybrid of hybrids” (Robinson, 1998). Just as in the courtroom drama, the legal thriller pulls in components of every form of drama and fiction, taking elements from every other mystery subgenre (e.g. the regional mystery, the spy story, the locked room, the financial thriller, the gumshoe detective).

In the past 20 years, a significant number of Italian lawyers, prosecutors, and judges, encouraged especially by the huge success of some American jurist-writers, moved toward the legal thriller novel. Among the most influential examples are two American lawyers turned into successful writers. The first one is Scott Turow, whose first legal thriller, Presumed Innocent (1987), consecrated him as a master of this genre. The second is probably the most influential writer of this genre, John Grisham, whose first bestseller, The Firm (1991), sold more than 7 million copies and was eventually adapted into a 1993 feature film. The success enjoyed by Grisham, a former lawyer and Mississippi legislator, whose books and movies have been translated or dubbed into 31 languages, played a pivotal role in the diffusion of the jurist-writer novel.

The recurring involvement of judiciary professionals in the production of genre fiction seems to have an established tradition in the American context. Indeed, even before Grisham and Turow, American readers were familiar with the judicial novels of John D Voelker, better known by his pen name Robert Traver, a renowned lawyer and author of the famous novel Anatomy of a Murder (1958). Other examples include Erle S Gardner, best known for the Perry Mason series of detective stories, Melville D Post, and of course a host of lesser known lawyer-authors. By contrast, the involvement of legal practitioners is relatively new within the Italian literary and publishing system. Nonetheless, this trend seems to be dominant today, given the unprecedented number of lawyers, judges, and prosecutors who have turned to writing legal thrillers. Furthermore, a peculiarity of the Italian legal thriller is the cohabitation with the noir genre.

It would be incorrect to consider these authors’ common profession the sole premise of a congruent Italian legal thriller wave. It is undeniable, though, that several novels present a common idea of narrative, as well as some particular patterns from the legal thriller genre. In addition to these features, the overall structure of these novels is often very similar to that of noir and detection novels. The literary critic Elisabetta Mondello recently proposed dividing the authors of this fruitful genre into two main categories. On one side, there would be the writing professionals. Among these are Carlo Lucarelli, Marcello Fois, Nicoletta Vallorani Grazia Verasani, Danila Comastri Montanari, and Andrea G Pinketts (Mondello, 2015). The second category proposed by Mondello would emerge during the mid-1990s and would refer to those individuals who, because of their life or profession, can be considered as “internal” to the world of the law administration.

Some of the “internal” writers are familiar with the justice system through having experienced accusation, miscarriages of justice, or imprisonment. The most striking case is perhaps that of Massimo Carlotto, who was at the center of one of the most controversial legal cases of Italian contemporary history. Arrested in 1976 and charged for the homicide of a 25-year-old student, Carlotto was first acquitted for lack of evidence but was eventually sentenced to 18 years in imprisonment. Public opinion took Carlotto’s side, and in 1993 the President of Italy, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, granted him a pardon. Later on, Carlotto recalled this experience in many of his books, but above all in his first one, entitled Il fuggiasco (1995). Also belonging to this category is the Pietro Valpreda and Piero Colaprico duo. Valpreda was an Italian anarchist, who was sentenced to prison on charges of being responsible of the December 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing and was later (1987) acquitted by the Supreme Court of Cassation due to lack of evidence. Valpreda and the Italian journalist Piero Colaprico wrote four novels together.

Naturally, the most significant part of the “internal” category is represented by lawyers, judges, prosecutors, and police officers. Some of them are retired—like Michele Giuttari, former chief superintendent of the Florentine police, who is famous for having led the investigation into the “Monster of Florence” murders. Others are still working, like Roberto Riccardi, a Carabinieri officer, who wrote a book about Bosnian war criminals, undercover agents, and gangsters during the so-called “Years of Lead”. Some of them have strategic positions within the Italian juridical system, such as State Councilor Domenico Cacòpardo. Cacòpardo’s most famous literary character is his alter ego, the prosecutor Italo Agrò, who he also plays in a famous Italian radio show.

The list of authors of legal thrillers and noir novels who are involved as specialists in the juridical system is far longer than this. Some of them are public prosecutors, such as Riccardo Targetti (Milan), Alessandro Cannevale and Giorgio Sottani (both in Perugia), but also Giovanni Simoni, the magistrate who supported the accusation in the Ambrosoli trial, and Enrico Stefani, the prosecutor who proceeded against the former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in relation to notorious statements where Berlusconi called the Magistratura “a cancer to be eradicated” and “a criminal conspiracy” (Santachiara, 2011). Also in this category is Francesco Caringella, now State Councilor, whose experience as a magistrate saw him involved in numerous important moments in recent Italian history, especially during a critical phase for the relation between juridical and political power called Mani Pulite.

Far from being exhaustive, the list of justice professionals who are at various levels involved in the Italian literary field is likely to increase, as the Italian publishing industry is investing many resources in developing this subgenre and expanding its market. Whether or not it is unanimously considered a discrete genre, the legal thriller is getting more and more recognition within the Italian literary field. These are not isolated cases but represent a real trend that seems to tie many former magistrates to narrative, with the support of a huge and growing popular success. Indeed, not only are justice-professional writers very productive, but they are also mostly successful, reaching high volumes of sales within the Italian literary market which traditionally registers modest figures. The Italian legal thriller is able to attract an ever-growing body of readership, not only through complex marketing operations but at various levels of distribution, and surprisingly by word of mouth. On top of that, Italian legal thrillers are often translated into many languages, and the rights of some highly successful novels have been acquired by the cinema and television industries.

Two of the most important writers of this era are Giancarlo De Cataldo and Gianrico Carofiglio. De Cataldo is a criminal court judge who works in Rome and has authored several novels that have topped the Italian bestseller lists. His name is immediately associated with the novel Romanzo Criminale (2002), but it is equally important to notice how he tends to work also as an aggregator of writers, an important figure in compacting the field. This tendency is attested to by his incessant involvement as editor of other writers’ work and for anthologies of this genre, such as Crimini, one of the most significant anthologies of short Italian crime stories.

But the justice-professional writer that best represents the Italian legal thriller is probably Gianrico Carofiglio, a former anti-Mafia judge in the city of Bari and a former Senator of the Italian Parliament. Carofiglio’s novels featuring the attorney-protagonist Guido Guerrieri have gained popularity in Italy and abroad since the first in the series emerged in 2002. In addition, Carofiglio’s work has also a wider resonance, contributing to debates about justice and law. In fact, his debut novel, Testimone inconsapevole (2002), inaugurated the Italian legal thriller and was soon adapted for a popular Italian TV show called L’avvocato Guerrieri (2007). In 2003, a second work that features Guerrieri as the protagonist, Ad occhi chiusi, determined the definitive success of the author. After being awarded the prestigious “Premio Bancarella” in 2005 for the novel Il passato è una terra straniera (2004), in 2006 Carofiglio published another with the attorney Guerrieri as protagonist, entitled Ragionevoli dubbi. This novel constitutes with Testimone and Ad occhi chiusi a sort of provisional trilogy of Guerrieri’s adventures. In 2007, Carofiglio published the essay L’arte del dubbio, a reflection on the inquisition and its relationship with the concept of truth, while in 2010 he published the fourth adventure of the lawyer Guerrieri, Le perfezioni provvisorie, together with the essay La manomissione delle parole. In 2014 came a new novel with Guerrieri as a protagonist, La regola dell’equilibrio, while in 2015 he published Con parole precise. Breviario di scrittura civile, a short pamphlet on the use of words and their relationship with power in a democratic system.

Among the firsts in its genre, Testimone inconsapevole is one of the most significant Italian legal thrillers, being essentially a novel about the trial and its mechanisms. The synopsis of this book could very well be summarized by the John Grisham quote which opened this article: “You throw an innocent person in there, get ’em caught up in a conspiracy and you get ’em out.” The protagonist of the novel, the Italian attorney Guido Guerrieri, is going through a difficult phase of his life. His divorce, plus dissatisfaction with his work, has led Guerrieri to suffer from panic attacks. One day, Guerrieri gets reluctantly involved in a controversial trial where a Senegalese immigrant is accused of kidnapping and murdering a young Italian boy. Guerrieri unenthusiastically accepts the case but, as the trial goes on, he becomes convinced of the man’s innocence and of the necessity of a full discharge from the accusations. At the end of an uncertain path of reconstruction of his principles and of his life, Guerrieri manages to obtain a non-guilty verdict that, given the circumstances, seemed almost impossible.

Rather than focusing on police procedure or getting into the head of a particular criminal or detective, Testimone inconsapevole is a peek inside the complicated machinery of the Italian justice system. Over the course of the novel, the author guides the reader through the problematic issues of the trial. On the one hand, Carofiglio has the ability to convey a constant sensation of uncertainty regarding the case, influenced also by an effective depiction of the theatrical and therefore unforeseeable dimension of the trial, but on the other hand he also seems to have strong confidence that eventually justice will be done. At one point in the novel, Guerrieri recounts that as a child he wanted to be a sheriff: “Quando mi dicevano che in Italia non esistono gli sceriffi, ma tutt’ al più i poliziotti, rispondevo con prontezza. Ero un bambino duttile e volevo dare la caccia ai cattivi in un modo o nell’altro” (Carofiglio, 2002: 220). And yet Guerrieri hazily remembers seeing, at the age of eight or nine, a purse-snatcher arrested and savagely beaten by two police officers. This scene of violence so affected him as a young boy that he renounced his desire to be a police officer. “Qualche volta,” says Guerrieri, “mi ero detto che avevo fatto l’avvocato per una specie di reazione al disgusto di quella scena” (Carofiglio, 2002: 222).

If a certain idea of justice is what drives the young Guido to become the attorney Guerrieri, what drives the 44-year-old magistrate Carofiglio to start writing legal thrillers? What are the historical, political, and cultural reasons that led Carofiglio, as well as many other magistrates, to re-elaborate a whole system of juridical practices and to translate them into novels? When asked about his decision to become a writer, Carofiglio draws upon the rhetoric of vocation. Of course, there may be many and different reasons for his choice, and vocation may be one of them. Yet vocation by itself cannot fully explain the large extension of such phenomenon.

At this point, it can be useful to reconsider Carofiglio and the other justice-professional writers cited above in a wider perspective, trying to historicize the affirmation of the so-called legal thriller. How could the Italian context become such a fertile ground for this genre? A first attempt to answer these questions should refer to some peculiarities in the relation between political and juridical power over the last 30 years of Italian history. Starting from the late 1980s, the role of the Magistratura within Italian political and cultural life has become more prominent. Some important trials, such as the celebrated Maxiprocesso (Maxi Trial) of the Mafia (1986–1992), profoundly affected the imaginary of the people, putting the trial at the center of Italy’s institutional, political, and cultural life.

With 475 mafiosi indicted, the Maxiprocesso of Cosa Nostra, held in a special bunker-courthouse built specifically for this occasion, was granted unprecedented attention by the media. The starting point of a long confrontation between the State and the Mafia, the Maxiprocesso represented an extraordinary demonstration of the power of the Italian institutions, which for the first time were able to coordinate their efforts to fight one of the most powerful and dangerous criminal organizations the world has ever seen. For this reason, the assassination of two of the leading magistrates involved in the construction of the Maxiprocesso, Giovanni Falcone (1939–1992) and Paolo Borsellino (1940–1992), deeply affected the public, triggering a popular response that culminated in the formation of the anti-mafia movement.

Moreover, during the first half of the 1990s, a pool of Italian judges carried out an investigation named Mani Pulite (literally “clean hands”), which led many politicians and public officials to be prosecuted and convicted for their corruption crimes. Mani Pulite led to the demise of the so-called “First Republic,” resulting in the disappearance of many political parties. Some politicians and industry leaders committed suicide after their crimes were exposed. In some accounts, as many as 5000 people have been cited as suspects. At one point, more than half of the members of the Italian Parliament were under indictment, and more than 400 city and town councils were dissolved because of corruption charges.

More recently, during the years of the so-called “Berlusconismo,” and especially during the 10 years (1994–1995, 2001–2006, 2008–2011) in which Silvio Berlusconi served as Italian Prime Minister, the tensions between the executive, legislative, and juridical powers reached its peak. Throughout his premiership, Berlusconi envisioned an extensive reform of the Italian juridical system, supporting a radical separation in the careers of magistrates and judges, as well as the introduction of the principle of ‘civil responsibility’ in the evaluation of magistrates’ conduct. More than once, Berlusconi declared that he felt like judges were persecuting him, and on many occasions he accused them of being openly politicized. Furthermore, it is worth noting that the political decline of Berlusconi was eventually determined by a declaration of ineligibility expressed by the court in 2011. As Giancarlo De Cataldo pointed out in his essay In Giustizia:

The Italian situation is emblematic. It’s been thirty years now that we read, almost everywhere, of a conflict between political and juridical power. From my perspective, which is openly partial, rather than conflict I would be led to refer to this in terms of aggression by politics. But conflict is perhaps the most digestible word for those who have different ideas. Then, let’s resign ourselves, let’s call it conflict. (De Cataldo, 2011: 10, translation author's own)

The distinct phases of the conflict between political and judiciary power were extensively recorded by the media, and as a result the public became increasingly familiar with juridical vocabulary and with the details of some important trials, which were constantly covered by all the major newspapers and broadcasted by the most successful TV shows. The unprecedented popularity of some magistrates transformed them into public figures (e.g. Antonio Di Pietro, Antonio Ingroia, Gustavo Zagrebelsky, and Gherardo Colombo). Some of them became politicians, while others led political and cultural battles whilst maintaining their positions within the Magistratura. It is difficult to summarize such an agitated phase in just a few lines; nonetheless, it is still interesting to note how many of the writers mentioned above were either part of some important investigation or were involved in the conflict between political and juridical power.

Another interesting element that characterizes this phase is the 1988 reform of the Code of Criminal Procedure (Codice di Procedura Penale). The importance of this reform for the affirmation of the legal thriller should definitely be emphasized. Indeed, before this reform, all attempts made by Italian authors to imitate the narrative mechanisms of the American legal thriller had somehow failed, and one reason for this failure might be found in the structure of the criminal procedure, which, before 1988, characterized the Italian system as mainly inquisitorial. The inquisitorial system is in fact typical of civil law systems (deriving from Roman law or the Napoleonic code), and the figure of the judge as the inquisitor did not allow enough space for the debate between prosecution and defense.

Following the judiciary reform of 1988, the Italian system became slightly more hybrid, incorporating some features of the so-called adversarial or adversary system. The adversarial system is a legal system used in common-law countries where two advocates represent their parties’ positions before an impartial person or group of people, usually a jury or judge, who attempt to determine the truth of the case. The adversarial system is the two-sided structure under which criminal trial courts operate, a system that pits the prosecution against the defense. Justice is done when the most effective adversary is able to convince the judge or jury that his or her perspective on the case is the correct one. The dialectical structure of the adversarial system definitely seems more suited to narrative representation, essentially that centered on the confrontation between the parties, a confrontation which guarantees an element of theatricality that was hard to find in the inquisitorial system. Furthermore, the public hearing, which replaces judges’ secret investigations, allows the audience/reader to follow the logical thread of the arguments of prosecution and defense, creating a pervasive effect of suspense.

In a recent essay, Remo Ceserani (2012) underlined how in common-law countries the trial entails a dramatic confrontation between two parties. The parties involved are assigned great autonomy and responsibility. Just like a play, the trial can be divided into acts, which the parties interpret according to a script. This script would be the model for the so-called “court room drama.” Additionally, Ceserani stressed the importance of the element of suspense in the Anglo-Saxon trial, which is not related to the original crime as much as it is to the speeches that take place in the court room. The suspense then results from the process of negotiation of justice. As in Kafka’s The Trial (1925), the threat of justice as an inexorable machine, insensitive to passions and human weaknesses, is here dramatized.

In conclusion, studying the legal thriller, as it emerged in the early 2000s in the Italian context, is crucial in making sense of some of the most important phases of Italy’s recent history. On the one hand, the legal thriller is shown to be an effective tool in developing an insight into the Italian judicial machinery, not only because of its structure, centered on courtroom matters, but also because its evolution reflects a shift in the paradigm of the judicial system, from a more inquisitorial system to a more openly dialogic one.

In a way, the inclination toward the courtroom, the debate, and the representation of passions that so characterized the post-unification judicial novel, and that according to Adamo the Italian tradition seemed to have abandoned, once again becomes vital in the Italian legal thriller. The inner perspective that these novels provide, supported by a noteworthy popular success, activates also an interesting interplay between different media. The level of insight proposed by justice professionals resonates with a common desire, perpetually articulated by the media, to understand the mechanisms of the ubiquitous machine of justice. Understanding this is crucial for making sense of the success of this kind of narrative that not only entertains the reader, and not only rewrites history in search of an unspoken truth, but also provides new dictionaries for understanding and interpreting the real.

On top of that, we assist in a total switch in paradigm in the way literature approaches law and vice versa. Indeed, if in the beginning we saw successful writers who were eager to learn the mechanisms of law in order to use the courtroom as the scenario of their storytelling, now we see the opposite phenomenon, with justice professionals becoming successful writers, and politicians and public figures interested in entering the literary field. Understanding what supports this shift of paradigm is fundamental if we want to understand how the relationship between law and literature is shaped today. Are these jurists in search of a different kind of public recognition, or the necessity of finding new ways of communicating their principles and their points of view to a larger audience should be read as the result of a conflict between institutional powers as suggested by De Cataldo? (De Cataldo, 2011: 10).

Without a doubt, Gianrico Carofiglio and the other jurists turned writers have contributed to further exposing the hidden narrative structure of the trial, leading their audiences through the maze of the Italian judiciary system. The success of Carofiglio’s work, and in particular the figure of the protagonist attorney Guido Guerrieri, an actual insider, represents the starting point of a contemporary approach to the judicial novel. In the relationship between the “real” Carofiglio and the “fictional” Guerrieri, what emerges is a new kind of judicial novel, released from the shackles of a juridical hyper-realism as well as from the representation of trials simply as the catharsis of human passions, a novel centered on the suspense of the machine, on the violence of everyday life, on the universe that populates courtrooms, prisons, and legal firms—something called the legal thriller.