With “The enigma of the scorpion” we are probably in the presence of a turning point in the production of Riccardo Pedraneschi. Light turn, soft turn, but which, in any case, remains a turn. In fact, if we compare this novel with those previously published (2016, 2017, 2018, 2020) and which always see Commissioner Luigi De Pedris as the protagonist, it seems to me that alongside the elements of continuity some elements of discontinuity also emerge. Among the former, the most striking is certainly the Sienese environment. When I speak of the Sienese setting, I do not mix exclusively with toponymy and the careful and precise description of streets, squares, closed environments. Nor do I have in mind the space granted once again to the Palio, with its traditions, its rivalries, its history, its jockeys and its horses. In the novel, Riccardo Pedraneschi also names people whom everyone knows in Siena and whom everyone can meet, such as Massimo Biliorsi and Andrea Milani; moreover, through the excursus, the writer recovers some fragments of local history of the seventeenth century (Rinaldo da Malborghetto) and, going even further back in time, of the thirteenth century (the Vicolo delle Carrozze).

Now, this love for the history of Siena, which is nothing more than an aspect of the love that the author has for our city, closely links “The enigma of the scorpion” to the “Mystery of the Pallacorda” or “Sangue tra i cypresses “. Just as – a further element of continuity – the character of De Pedris, both in the private sphere (affections, passions, weaknesses) and in the way of conducting the investigation, is now familiar to the reader, it does not surprise him, it does not disturb him, a little ‘as does a friend who comes back to visit you after a short period of silence and distance. Why, then, do I speak of a possible turning point in Riccardo Pedraneschi’s art? Because never as this time, we find ourselves in the presence of a rarefaction of the action, to the point that the commissioner never witnesses bloody facts nor are these shown to the reader as they unfold. Both one (De Pedris) and the other (the reader), rather, learn them through the speeches – testimonies, confessions – of the other characters involved in the story, as happens, for example, in the struggle between a woman and a man inside a car. In short, the relationship between words and actions is all unbalanced in favor of the former, to the point that the solution of the case, as happens in one of the mysteries of Agatha Christie starring Poirot, is found inside a room (of the Police Headquarters), studying, weighing, interpreting the clues collected up to that moment.

Among these, a place of absolute importance is occupied by the cards of the “Merchant at the fair”, which the murderer either finds next to the victims or sends the commissioner himself, after written on the back, however, with a black marker, the name of one of the seventeen districts. A pre-eminence, that of the word over the action, of the closed over the open, which seems to suggest that if the external space is the place of violence and evil, which the news can limit itself to recording, it is within the human mind that both the one and the other find their origin, and it is there, in those dungeons of the soul, that the inspector must go down to discover the truth: the stalking, the wiretapping, the raids, the stalking, they always come after in importance. The following passage is taken from the Prologue, bearing the indication “Monteriggioni, Wednesday 22 July 2020 at 3:00”:

“Twenty-five Red! Just as in an imaginary roulette in the life of Commissioner Luigi De Pedris a new number had come out. Beside him lay completely naked a woman whom he had met in via di Città on the morning of May 25 two months earlier. It was a Monday and Siena, like the rest of Italy, was slowly recovering from that long and terrible lockdown that had radically changed the way we all lived and thought. On his way to the police station, Luigi had met the gaze of this splendid blonde who had first smiled at him with her eyes and then had asked him a question that, despite her apparent simplicity, had greatly upset him. ‘Am I wrong or are you Commissioner De Pedris?’. Although the surprise was so great, without thinking about the singular normality of his answer he heard his own voice chant the following words: ‘Of course it’s me! Have we met before?’. As the saying goes, “they had broken the ice”, and so within two minutes, the man and the woman found themselves sitting at a table in Piazza del Campo drinking a caffeine accompanied by a double cream donut. She told him that she was a French freelance journalist, that her name was Daniela and that she had been married. At the moment she was busy, but not too much, and she wanted a particular relationship with a mature man who knew how to do it, without creating them, as she had not done, any kind of problem “.

Riccardo Pedraschi, The enigma of the scorpion, Soncini, Parma 2021

edited by Francesco Ricci