THE BASTARDS OF PIZZOFALCONE

In the Bastard books we have contemporary Naples in all its noisy complexity, and a group of cops whose insights into crime arise as much from their own imperfections as from their training and experience.
We arrive in the rough Neapolitan precinct of Pizzofalcone in the company of Lieutenant Giuseppe Lojacono, a Sicilian known as “the Chinaman” because of his “almond-shaped eyes.”
Their replacements are discards, Lojacono’s Commissario warns him: “people who aren’t welcome where they are now, whose commanding officers are eager to get rid of them. Renegades, bastards, or screwups, every last one of them!”
Each of the Bastards books is structured around a primary case with subordinate but sometimes intersecting plot lines.