True Crime: Sicilian Shadows by Francesco Scanella. What happens when a seven year old boy is uprooted from his home in Surrey and moves to the heart of the Cosa Nostra in Sicily

The Crime Warp’s always been about crime fiction and thrillers – I’ve avoided “true crime” as I’ve found it is often comes across as just an excuse for lots of “ugh” and it disturbs me in a way that fiction doesn’t. However, today I’m going to break my own rule to highlight a book called Sicilian Shadows by Francesco Scanella. Scanella was born in Walton on Thames, Surrey, but at seven moved from farms and Father Thames to Mussomeli a small hillside town in Sicily, whose way of life Scanella describes as almost medieval. 

The book is Scanella’s memoir about the way his life changed and how he had to adapt to a way of life far removed from genteel Surrey, to one where machismo and violence are not just a personal style or choice, but the only way to survive. Scanella shows why people turned to the Mafia and perceptively how for many, a desperate life almost inevitably led to crime. I did reflect whether that’s something we should think more deeply about when we look at the life and future of our own communities here in the UK.
  

Scanella has an intriguing narrative voice. Humorous? Yes, quire wry at times. Honest? Almost brutally so. The book is however a genuinely unsentimental story, which I think is one of the things that makes it attractive. True crime and memoirs aren’t for everyone, but you may just want to dip your toe in the water with this one.
 
Romancrimeblogger