Equal Danger - Softcover

District Attorney Varga is shot dead and then two judges are murdered - Inspector Rogas works his way into the mind of his prime suspect in Equal Danger, a wide-ranging political thriller that brilliantly evokes Sicily by a great European writer. There are four novellas in Sicilian Uncles in which illusions about history and ideology are lost in mirth, in suffering and the abandonment of innocence. Each is set in a historical moment: the events of 1848, the Spanish Civil War, the Allied invasion of Sicily and the death of Stalin.

Developed under Sciascia's hand in the spirit of a parody, Equal Danger has come to be regarded as a wide-ranging political thriller, one of the masterpieces in the genre. District Attorney Varga is shot dead while picking a sprig of jasmine. Then Judge Sanza is killed. Then Judge Azar. Is this string of murders an individual vendetta or a more sinister plot? The charming detective inspector Rogas works his way into the mind of his prime suspect, Cres. The pursuit of truth and justice are Rogas's vocation, but his work is frustrated by a system which defies his understanding. The book, written in 1971, uncannily prefigures the Red Brigade's subsequent killing of magistrates and the Catholic-Communist pact of the late 1970s in Italy.