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| The latest Italian-made "Kverse" spy novel in Mondadori's "Segretissimo", december 2024. |
I've been a professional fiction writer in Italy since 1991, creating a few series of my own, from mystery to science fiction, and doing some tie-in work I'm very proud of. But I guess my biggest accomplishment is the universe that has been called "Kverse" (after the letter K, by which I often sign my emails), a noir/spy saga that started exactly 30 years ago: 5 interconnected series, 30 books plus 12 original ebooks and several still uncollected short stories, signed both with my name, Andrea Carlo Cappi, and the pen name François Torrent. Since 2019, older titles are reappearing.under my real name from Oakmond Publishing on Amazon, while new titles by "François Torrent" are published by Mondadori, the latest in the next few days.
One of the best kept secrets in Italy is the success of Italian spy novelists since the 90's. Most of them appear in Mondadori's "Segretissimo" collection, since 1960 available in newsstands all over the country (and, since 2012, also in ebooks, though paper is still the most important part of the business); it's the same kind of distribution that has been used for "Giallo Mondadori", the publisher's mystery and thriller collection.
There's no bestseller list for books sold in newstands, so nobody knows they sell more then many titles in bookshops; since they seemingly do not exist, they're not translated abroad and media don't talk about them: it's all left to word-of-mouth among Italian readers. But last night, after the publisher revealed on Facebook the cover of the latest novel by "François Torrent", there's been a huge response by fans.
As I already mentioned in an article about giallo, the fascist regime didn't approve of Italian authors writing mystery and thrillers. This led Italian readers to believe we were not even able to do it. Nevertheless, a few authors managed to publish great mystery books after WWII; Italian-made thrillers and crime stories have been very succesful in tv and cinemas since the 60's. So readers finally accepted "domestic" mystery novels in the 90's, but were still doubtful about Italian-made spy stories.
"Segretissimo", which had been succesfully publishing French, British and American spy novels, had started infiltrating Italian authors among its books in the 80's, but writers have been encouraged to use foreign pen names to sign their spy stories: today most of its authors are Italian, both men and women, working under fake identities. We've been dubbed "Italian Foreign Legion".
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| Giallo Mondadori's Christmas issue, nov. 1994, with the first Carlo Medina short story |
I decided to write thrillers, particularly spy thrillers, in 1970, when I was six years old, after seeing North by Northwest and Dr. No. There would be a few more influences, because in the same period I also saw my first spaghetti western (Sergio Corbucci's Vamos a matar, compañeros) and started reading adventure novels by Emilio Salgari and Diabolik comics. At fourteen I began working on my early short stories, not so well written, but containing a few interesting characters and plots, and the firt bits of a "universe" I would later rewrite.
In 1991 I was hired by RadioRAI, Italy's national radio, for a succesful anthology mystery series; most of my material was planned for season two... which would be canceled, so I didn't get even paid for the one episode that had already been recorded (I'd be luckier in 2003, co-writing for RadioRAI the series Mata Hari, reaching an audience of millions). But, while picking up something from my universe and reshaping it, I started planning a thriller saga mostly set in Europe, covering a timespan from 1936 to modern times: the dark side of the world, told through crime and spy fiction.
After I established myself as a short story writer for "Giallo Mondadori", I was asked to write one for the 1994 Christmas issue. I adapted one of my early plots to the particular historical moment Italy was living, the aftermath of the fall of the First Republic. My mix of noir and socio-political remarks featuring Carlo Medina, former copywriter in Milan turned professional hitman, was very well received and gave birth to a series which would include novelettes and novels.
Among them, in 1997, my most succesful book ever, in which Medina unravels the plot that killed someone unnamed but easy to recognize: the novel was considered a very plausible explanation of the death of Lady Diana Spencer by one of Italy's top TV journalists. The stories with Medina as the main character are now collected in five volumes, but he also appears as a sidekick in other series of the same universe, Nightshade and Sickrose.
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| The first "Nightshade" novel in Mondadori's "Segretissimo", march 2002 |
In 2001 fellow author Stefano Di Marino made me notice that no series with a female secret agent was being published in "Segretissimo". Our conversation inspired me to create a new format, which I proposed to "Segretissimo" and was quickly approved: Nightshade (later renamed Agente Nightshade) features Spanish free-lance spy and hitwoman Mercy Contreras, codename Nightshade, whose first novel was released in 2002; the latest was in summer 2024.
Though I was publishing Medina and several other books with my own name, for Nightshade I had to assume the pen name François Torrent in order to avoid the distrust of Italian readers. The formula mixes action, international plots and a few real life events told from a different angle: one of my novels even forced Italy's Prime Minister to explain a previous statement of his, made at the eve of the Second Gulf War.
Twenty years ago, in 2004, another character emerged from the Nightshade series: Bolivian-born hitwoman Rosa Kerr, codename Sickrose, who would gain her own spin-off series in 2021: her fourth novel - a team-up with Carlo Medina, to celebrate both his 30th birthday and her 20th - is published this month in "Segretissimo".
A subject I've been following in many spy novels is the rise of the extreme right in the West: you can write an entertaining action series and also seriously point out what is really happening in the world. I even managed to "foresee" a few events, such as the second wave of terrorist attacks in Paris in november 2015, the links between separatists in Europe and Russian agents in 2016-17, or the "civil war" attempt in the US after the 2020 elections.
Meanwhile I went back to noir in 2013, with the Afro-spanish private detective Toni "Black" Porcell appearing in various short stories (most of them later collected in a book) and two novels; Black is also a member of Nightshade's team since 2015.
And in 2019 I recovered another old idea connected to the same universe: a Cold War spy series set in Spain during the 40's called Dark Duet (after an old novel by Peter Cheyney), which is currently published in original ebooks from Delos Digital.
Unlike traditional serial heroes and heroines, my characters grow old. If the saga goes on, someday they might pass the baton to younger characters, such as Cleo, and Afro-italian girl who often joins Nightshade's team; or Vida, Nicaraguan-born daughter of a former Russian masterspy, who is now Sickrose's protégée. It's a growing extended family I've been living with for (over) thirty years; and I'll keep writing about all of them as long as readers still follow and love them.
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| Left to right, models Mary Rossa and Selene Feltrin as Sickrose and Nightshade in the series booktrailers |
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