Happy new year from Italian writer A. C. Cappi to you... and to them.
Who are they and why 2024 is so important for them? They are the main contemporary characters of my Italian language spy-story/noir literary universe that has been called "Kverse" and have entertained about one hundred thousand Italian readers for almost thirty years.
From left to right, Italian hitman Carlo Medina (no relationship with the character of the same name in the tv series Ugly Betty), Bolivian hitwoman Rosa "Sickrose" Kerr, Spanish private detective Toni "Black" Porcell and Spanish contractor Mercedes "Nightshade" Contreras, also called "Mercy". Each one has her/his own series, although they all frequently work with Mercy in her Nightshade/Agente Nightshade series.
Medina was the first to be published, in the novelette Milano da morire on the special 1994 Christmas issue of 'Il Giallo Mondadori". This makes 2024 the 30th anniversary of the Kverse, now reaching around thirty titles (including three collections of short stories and novelettes) plus various short stories - still uncollected - and twelve Dark Duet novelettes (and more to come) published in ebook, featuring characters of a previous generation in the early years of the Cold War.
Actually, I've been living in this "universe" for quite a long time: I started working on it in 1978 (I was 14 at the time) and brushed up the material in the early Nineties. Since 2002 I've been publishing Kverse novels in the "Segretissimo Mondadori" collection mostly under the pen name François Torrent. Since 2019, older titles have been republished in a collection from Oakmond Publishing, all under my real name, Andrea Carlo Cappi. I'm currently working on two new novels for Mondadori in 2024. Wishing to myself that in the new year the Kverse might start being available at last to readers outside Italy.
Andrea Carlo Cappi, born in Milan in 1964 and living between Italy and Spain since 1973, is an Italian writer, translator and editor. Author of over sixty titles - most of which set in his noir/spy story universe "Kverse" - member of IAMTW he also writes tie-in novels for "Diabolik" and "Martin Mystère". In 2018 he won the Premio Italia for best Italian fantasy novel.
