A journey through Gianrico Carofiglio’s books, the Italian writer, former magistrate and former politician born on May 30, 1961 in Bari. We are speaking, in fact, of one of the most read and esteemed signatures of Italian crime writing and thriller fiction, especially of the legal thriller, a subgenre that unmistakably points back to the juridical core of the stories told.
Carofiglio has, in fact, spent many years working as a magistrate, holding prominent roles in the fight against organized crime. This professional experience deeply influenced the themes he tackles and his writing, particularly in the portrayal of the justice system (with its lights and shadows) and of criminal investigations.
This commitment led him, from 2008 to 2013, to be elected as a senator of the Italian Republic as a member of the Democratic Party.
To accompany Gianrico Carofiglio’s political-legal activity, of course, comes the career as a writer. After his narrative debut for Sellerio in 2002 with the novel Testimone inconsapevole – which introduces the famous Guido Guerrieri character – the author would present several novels featuring the criminal-defense attorney and the judicial world.
These books fit, as already mentioned, within the legal thriller line: a subgenre that blends the narrative tension typical of mysteries and thrillers with a deep reflection on the ethical and moral dilemmas of justice, a genre that spread in Italy also thanks to Carofiglio himself.
Carofiglio’s prose stands out for its sober yet richly psychological characterization of the characters, with tight dialogues that frequently draw from his first-hand experience in the legal field.
In addition to the Guido Guerrieri novels, Carofiglio has written essays, short stories, and other non-serialized narrative works, earning numerous recognitions (including the Bancarella Prize).
In this article we focus on this multifaceted figure, capable of telling—through the conventions of literature and the adventures of his characters—the most controversial and debated aspects of the legal arena.
The books below are presented in order of release date (from the debut to the latest editions) and are divided by category.
Index
- The Guido Guerrieri Lawyer Series
- The Marshal Pietro Fenoglio Series
- The Penelope Spada Former Public Prosecutor Series
- Novels
- Short Stories
- Essays
- Novels for Girls and Boys
The Guido Guerrieri Series
Innocent Witness
Testimone inconsapevole (Sellerio, 2002), as noted, is the first chapter of the bustling adventures of the beloved protagonist Guido Guerrieri (narrated by the author himself in audio form for the Audible platform). In his first investigation, however, the lawyer does not face fearsome criminals but his own life: from a wife who left him to work that does not satisfy him. In a changing, indifferent and criminal Bari, the man moves stealthily in search of desperate causes, into which he dives for the love of truth. Here Abdou Thiam, a Senegalese vendor, is accused of murdering a child: a brutal, seemingly inexplicable crime to which crushing evidence seems to bind him. Yet within his fate there is a lawyer in crisis who has decided to fight to save him, and thus to give his life a new course…
Ad occhi chiusi
Among Carofiglio’s early books, also Ad occhi chiusi (Sellerio, 2003), the second legal thriller after his debut with Testimone inconsapevole. In these pages there is voice to a hateful persecution, a trap of domination that inexorably entwines the young Martina Fumai. A fate that seems unjustly marked but in which, amid life’s troubles and the labyrinths of the courts, the Guerrieri attorney again takes up the defense.
Reasonable Doubts
Published by Sellerio in 2006, Reasonable Doubts presents another case of (mis)justice signed by Gianrico Carofiglio. One of the most famous lawyers in Italian fiction in this volume faces a man in prison who proclaims his innocence: Fabio Paolicelli, known as Raybàn, a former extreme-right roughneck convicted in the first instance for drug trafficking. A pretext that sets the stage for an engrossing journey through the Italian judicial system and the investigative process, alongside a character who is nothing short of extraordinary: a humane and melancholic hero, full of lights and shadows.
Temporary Perfections
In an unusual assignment, Guido Guerrieri’s bustling professional life receives a jolt; a case perhaps more suited to a detective than to a lawyer: Manuela, a university student, disappears at a station after a lively weekend with friends. Skeptical and curious, given the murky and seemingly contradictory dynamics, the renowned attorney born from Carofiglio’s pen begins to study the papers. He uncovers unimaginable facts and hidden truths, recounted in Temporary Perfections (Sellerio, 2010).
The Rule of Equilibrium
It is a strange spring reflected in the dirty mood of Guido Guerrieri. The lawyer, “ cornered” by a troubled personal matter, seems to shut himself away. The preferred interlocutor remains, as always, the punching bag hanging from the ceiling. But a client arrives who is not ordinary: a renowned judge, his former university classmate. He asks Guerrieri to defend him against a corruption charge, and—almost involuntarily—Guerrieri lets himself be drawn into the case. Gradually he loses lucidity, torn between formality and conscience. His inner quarrel, which accompanies the controversial legal case, is narrated in The Rule of Equilibrium (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2014).
The Measure of Time
Again for Einaudi Stile Libero, Carofiglio published in 2019 The Measure of Time, a novel grounded in a distant past (and with which the author took part in the Strega Prize in 2020). Lorenza was a radiant girl, dazzling in her charm. The woman Guerrieri faces in his studio one afternoon in late winter does not resemble her former self at all: she bears none of the brightness of that time. The reason? Her son Iacopo is in prison for voluntary manslaughter. The lawyer, for his part, is hardly convinced by her complaints, but takes the case anyway; perhaps also to pay a melancholic tribute to ghosts, to youth’s lost privileges…
The Horizon of Night
The Confession of Elsa – the latest release from the Bari-born writer returns the protagonist who, with his adventures, has captivated numerous readers. The Confession of Elsa (reissued by Einaudi Stile Libero) deepens his encounter with Elsa Corsini, a former philosophy teacher and author of unpredictable and unpredictable essays, whose voice “emits a vibration of danger.” While she has throughout life paid little heed to the consequences of her actions, Guerrieri has always favored kindness and scrupulousness in facing any situation. When the two meet in a Bari bookstore open only at night, they exchange stories of mistakes, harms, and aspects of themselves they had always hidden…
Series with Marshal Pietro Fenoglio
A Mutable Truth
Good investigators must be able to construct a narrative. And once that is done, they must seek confirmations and contradictions. This is the constant in another major protagonist of Carofiglio’s novels: Marshal Pietro Fenoglio, a Piedmontese transplanted to Bari, a narrator-investigator who finds himself investigating a homicide where everything seems far too clear. A Mutable Truth (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2014) is a short novel in which Carofiglio gives life to a melancholic and gentle character, lucid in his relentless quest for justice.
The Cold Summer
Bari, 1992. The news that a child, son of a clan chief, has been kidnapped, triggers Fenoglio’s investigations, who immediately grasps the gravity of the situation: anything could happen. Then, unexpectedly, the young boss who sparked the war decides to cooperate with the justice system. But the statements of the turncoat will not be enough to shed light on the child’s disappearance. To uncover the truth Fenoglio will be forced to venture into territory where it is hardest to distinguish what is right from what is wrong. His dangerous investigations are told by Gianrico Carofiglio in the second work starring the marshal: The Cold Summer (Einaudi, 2006).
The Version of Fenoglio
The latest “chapter” with Pietro Fenoglio, The Version of Fenoglio (Einaudi, 2019), features the unusual appearance of Giulio, a bright and sensitive twenty-year-old. The two become friends in the most unexpected circumstances and their meetings unfold through personal confidences and the recounting of an investigation. Gradually this inquiry transforms into a meditation on knowledge, on the elusive concepts of truth and lie. The Version of Fenoglio is “a manual on the art of investigation hidden inside a gripping novel,” a tale populated by characters who—as often highlighted in Carofiglio’s books—boast extraordinary authenticity.
The Penelope Spada Former Public Prosecutor Series
The Discipline of Penelope
The bibliography of Gianrico Carofiglio does not feature only male investigations. A notable example is the Penelope Spada series, introduced in Penelope’s Discipline (Mondadori, 2021). The new protagonist awakens in a stranger’s house after another wild night. She was a public prosecutor before a mysterious incident tragically ended her career. One day a man who has been investigated for his wife’s murder shows up asking her to take on the case to recover lost honor, to know what to tell his daughter when she grows up and asks about her mother. Penelope, after an initial refusal, is persuaded and thus begins a fascinating investigation that threads together memories of a life that never quite returns…
Rancor
In Rancor (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2022), the most recent entry in the Penelope Spada series, a wealthy and powerful baron dies suddenly. The daughter does not believe it to be natural and turns to the former public prosecutor Penelope. The investigation, initially appearing with little prospect, unexpectedly becomes a dramatic reckoning with the past. A moment with destiny and the possibility of changing it. In the folds of a taut narrative that keeps the reader on edge until the last page, Carofiglio returns with a human adventure through a character who is both epic and fragile.
Novels
The Past Is a Foreign Country
In 2004, for Rizzoli, Gianrico Carofiglio publishes The Past Is a Foreign Country. The novel — winner of the Bancarella Prize 2005 — tells the story of Giorgio, a twenty-two-year-old model son of bourgeois intellectuals, leading a normal and somewhat dull life. Francesco, instead, is mysterious, charming, and lives as a swindler. The two become friends and move from one “rigged” game to another, in an inexorable descent into the hells. A story that soon intertwines with a police investigation into mysterious assaults in the undergrowth of Bari, inscrutable…
Neither Here nor There – A Night in Bari
Rivedersi dopo vent’anni con amici che non si sono più cercati. This is the premise of Carofiglio’s Nowhere Here or Elsewhere – A Night in Bari, published by Laterza in 2008. And if during the day a few minutes would suffice for a cordial greeting, by night it is a completely different matter. Nighttime Bari can seize and transform into an unreal cinema where present and past, memories and invention, blend together. “The age from which illusions flee can still brush against the time when everything was possible.”
The Silence of the Wave
Among Carofiglio’s works is The Silence of the Wave (Rizzoli, 2011), a novel recounting the story of Roberto Marias, with which the author first participated in the Strega Prize. The man crosses central Rome each week to see a psychiatrist: he sits in front of him, often remaining in silence. Sometimes memories rise and carry him back to when, with his father, he faced the waves on a surfboard. Until the risky years as an undercover agent, when he encountered cynicism, corruption, and horror. A “ghost” by trade, he learned to deceive, to betray, to disappear without leaving a trace. A life that intoxicated him and, like a wave, overwhelmed him.
The Dizzying Edge of Things
Enrico Vallesi – the protagonist of The Dizzying Edge of Things (Rizzoli, 2013) – is a man betrayed by the success of his first novel, trapped in a paradoxical fate. The whole unfolds until the morning he reads a bitter news item in the paper that brings a name from the past back. Enrico boards a train and returns to the city where he grew up, from which he fled many years before. A journey of rediscovery through the memories of a turbulent adolescence, in a coming-of-age novel about life and violence and also a tale about a passion for ideas and for words.
The House in the Woods
Among Carofiglio’s works is The House in the Woods (Rizzoli, 2014), a novel co-authored with his brother Francesco Carofiglio. The two protagonists—who are also authors—are brothers, yet they do not see each other often. Now they must work together for a few hours: they need to take one last look at their childhood’s countryside vacation home—the house in the woods that gives the title to the novel—before handing the keys to the new owner. Thus Gianrico and Francesco Carofiglio (re)trace the narrow line that divides affection and rivalry, in a four-handed memoir that speaks of lost friendships, stolen loves, old comics, and ricotta cake.
Three in the Morning
Antonio is a lonely and resentful high school student, while his father is a mathematically brilliant man from the past. Their relationship—delved into by Gianrico Carofiglio in Three in the Morning (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2017)—has never been easy. Everything changes dramatically when, one afternoon in the early 1980s, they land in Marseille, and a series of unforeseen circumstances forces them to spend two days together. They truly come to know each other for the first time: they mirror one another and confront the elusive figure of their mother and ex-wife. Their journey will be a fast-paced ride through rough neighborhoods and memories both hidden and indelible, filled with spectacular sea landscapes and nocturnal creatures…
Short Stories
The Policeman’s Paradox
Among Carofiglio’s shorter works, The Policeman’s Paradox (nottetempo, 2009) is a short story in which a writer grapples with a new novel. It features a philosophy-graduate inspector who knows the secret to coax confessions without resorting to violence, and who, through dialogue with Gianrico Carofiglio—years as a Deputy Public Prosecutor against the Mafia in Bari—shows readers the secrets of his profession. A dialogue that offers lessons on interrogation technique and the art of questioning, behind which lies a metaphor for secular thinking and tolerance.
There Is No Wisdom
Women who appear suddenly and disappear just as quickly, juxtaposed with men who search for something they do not know and that pushes them beyond the predictable. Snippets of broken dialogues and unusual situations recounted by Gianrico Carofiglio in There Is No Wisdom (first published by Rizzoli in 2010, later reissued by Einaudi Stile Libero in an integrated edition), a kind of fresco made of questions and illuminations relating to the most intrinsic and hidden nature of humanity.
Cocaine
The cocaine story moves enormous capital and builds empires, destroys, reshapes and shapes consciences. Central to the collection Cocaine (Einaudi, 2013), this substance makes everyone a bit more criminal: sought after by workers waiting for gigs in the Northeast cities, and by the partner or life companion you share your days with. A silent presence that literature makes visible once again. Three interlinked stories, three different and complementary faces of the same coin. Three beloved serial authors – Massimo Carlotto, Gianrico Carofiglio, and Giancarlo De Cataldo – who entertain, unsettIe and provoke reflection.
Night Travelers
In Carofiglio’s repertoire also Night Travelers (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2016), a short story collection where the voices resound in the darkness of half-empty carriages, flashes that arise from fragments of conversation, hidden scents in the nooks of memory. The short pieces—thirty three-page segments—represent different genres in a sequence of anecdotes, essays, and quick glimpses of life lived. And the collection is populated mainly by elusive female figures, while dramatic events alternate with humorous situations, all in a game of mirrors between reality and fiction.
Essays
The Art of Doubt
Among Carofiglio’s early forays into essays is The Art of Doubt (Sellerio, 2007), a manual on interrogation technique that dissects how to undermine or reinforce a testimony in a criminal trial. Built through real interrogation cases, it offers a privileged view—firsthand and from inside the field—on the workshop of the author of legal thrillers.
The Tampering of Words
“Words serve to communicate and tell stories, but also to produce transformations and alter reality.” Carofiglio starts from this seemingly banal premise for the drafting of The Tampering of Words (Rizzoli, 2010, edited by Margherita Losacco), a book in which the multifaceted author reflects on the languages of power and oppression. Among these pages he dedicates himself to the recovery of five key words of civil discourse: shame, justice, rebellion, beauty, and choice, linked within a conceptual itinerary rich in suggestion and change…
With Feet in the Mud – Conversations on Politics and Truth
In With Feet in the Mud – Conversations on Politics and Truth (Edizioni Gruppo Abele, 2018, with Jacopo Rosatelli), a quick guide to exercising critical thinking, essential in everyday life to resist manipulation and reaffirm—against every fanaticism—the liberating and moving value of truth and political engagement. “Because the future belongs to the non-disillusioned.”
The New Tampering of Words
The Tampering of Words – a manual that Carofiglio has encountered before – was archived and updated by Feltrinelli in 2021 (in a volume edited by Margherita Losacco), with the new twists of language produced by populist thought. Six pillars of civil vocabulary are recovered: shame, justice, rebellion, beauty, choice, and people. Starting from these keywords, Carofiglio builds a profound itinerary through the twists and turns of language and its use, in a free journey through literature, ethics, and politics.
The Coffee Hour – A Conversation Manual for Incompatible Generations
Among the latest works by Carofiglio is “The Coffee Hour – Conversations on Politics and Truth” (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2022) where, tired of endless talking, the author and his daughter Giorgia sit at a table and tackle some of the topics that have most divided them. Issues that concern everyone like climate, feminism, and food. And of course politics, treated without concealing differences in thought and thus producing sharp reasoning, to give life to a challenge about the possibility of a common language and a shared worldview.
Praise for Ignorance and Error
We continue with Carofiglio’s essays with the volume In Praise of Ignorance and Error (Einaudi Stile Libero, 2024), in which the best-selling author—drawing from anecdotes, science, sport and philosophy—tells of the joy of conscious ignorance. It indeed admits, contrary to common sense, a great opportunity: to recognize our mistakes and learn from them. “Since childhood they tell us that if you fail you get a bad grade; to err is to break the rules, to err is to fail.” But as Carofiglio explains in this book, error is an inevitable part of growth, and admitting it is a fundamental step toward the development of open minds and balanced personalities.
On Kindness and Courage – A Brief Compendium of Politics and Other Things
In 2025 Feltrinelli republished the volume On Kindness and Courage – A Brief Compendium of Politics and Other Things originally written in 2020 by Gianrico Carofiglio. In this compact essay, which you can read in depth here, the author lays out rules and suggestions for a new practice of civil coexistence. This applies as much to those who hold power as — and perhaps especially — to citizens. Starting from teachings of Eastern masters and moving through modern thinkers, Carofiglio reveals a new sense for ancient words, foremost among them the word kindness. It has nothing to do with manners or meekness, but sketches a new model of a civilized man who accepts conflict and engages with it according to rules.
With Precise Words – A Manual of Civil Self-Defense
In With Precise Words – A Manual for Civil Self-Defense, Carofiglio discusses how to counter a confusing and disorganized society through civil writing — clear, democratic writing that respects words and ideas. Through concrete examples, from Trump’s rallies to rhetoric and propaganda speeches, Carofiglio explains the traps and mechanisms that often aim to block critical thinking while loudly stressing that “the quality of public discourse is the quality of our democracy.”
Novels for Girls and Boys
Igniting the Fires – A Manual of Struggle and Kindness
The Bari-born writer also authored a novel for girls and boys: Igniting the Fires – A Manual of Struggle and Kindness published by Mondadori and enriched by Chiara Brambilla’s illustrations. In this book Carofiglio speaks directly to young readers (but also to adults) about the power of words and of actions. Every day, each of us faces a choice: to accept reality as it is or to ask if something can be changed, to remain silent or to raise one’s voice in disagreement… And that is why, in order to exercise citizens’ rights, one must ask the right questions: what is power and who wields it? Why isn’t freedom simply doing whatever we want? When we communicate, are we aware that we hold a powerful instrument capable of hurting but also of welcoming?
