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I crimini della CIA in Nicaragua raccontati da R. J. Ellory

By a.fognini | Settembre 12, 2011

di Luca Crovi

Washington è sconvolta dai brutali omicidi compiuti dall’“assassino del nastro”. Ha già ucciso quattro donne, firmando i suoi delitti cospargendo di lavanda le vittime e lasciando loro legato un nastro al collo. A dare la caccia all’imprendibile serial killer è il detective dal passato inquieto Robert Miller, intrepido protagonista dell’ultimo noir di R. J. Ellory intitolato “Un semplice atto di violenza” (Giano Editore) che conferma la sua attitudine di protagonista del noir britannico (stoffa d’autore mostrata anche nei precedenti “Due piani sopra l’Inferno”, “La voce degli angeli” e “Vendetta”). Un’indagine che, poco alla volta, porterà l’agente Miller a doversi occupare delle attività illecite della CIA in Nicaragua. “Ho sempre avuto una profonda fascinazione per quelle persone che sono portate a compiere un crimine – ci spiega R. J. Ellory che in questi giorni è ospite a Festivaletteratura a Mantova –  ed il semplice fatto che i crimini seriali siano considerati i più incomprensibili è un argomento per me ancora più affascinante. Possiamo arrivare a capire perché la gente ruba e commette una frode, perché uccide per rabbia o a causa dei pregiudizi e della gelosia, ma i serial killer sembrano essere motivati da qualcos’altro. Un movente misterioso che non è mai stato mai capito fino in fondo e probabilmente mai lo sarà.”.

 Perché crede nella letteratura di suspense?

“Penso che i grandi libri lavorino sempre a un livello forte emozionale.  E la paura è un’emozione molto potente.  Probabilmente la gente legge i gialli ed i romanzi dell’orrore perché permettono loro di provare emozioni di cui ordinariamente non fanno esperienza nella vita quotidiana. E lo fa senza costringerli a metter in pericolo se stessi… Con “Un semplice atto di violenza” ho voluto spiegare come spesso certe decisioni, prese per giuste ragioni, possano avere conseguenze distruttive a lungo termine. Questo libro è la biografia di un uomo che si trova a fare ammenda per le sue azioni passate e decide di andare volontariamente contro il proprio governo per riparare l’equilibrio infranto. Also, back in 2005, I released a book that was a Mafia-based thriller called ‘A Quiet Vendetta’, and there I covered fifty years of Italian-American organized crime.  At the end of writing that book, I realized that at some point I would have to address the really organized criminals, and who better as a subject than politicians and intelligence operatives?”

Parlare del Nicaragua vuol dire pescare nel passato torbido dell’America…

 “Ho scelto il Nicaragua perché ho ritenuto che fosse una parte della storia americana recente che era stata troppo a lungo nascosta. Nessuno degli agenti segreti americani operativi in Nicaragua ha mai saputo quanto realmente dovesse andare in profondità la sua opera di cospirazione né che tipo di distruzione avrebbe causato ai danni della popolazione locale. Penso che chiunque analizzi, non sommariamente, le azioni del governo degli Stati Uniti in molte aree internazionali sia colpito e stordito dagli orrori che sono stati perpetrati in nome della politica estera. Il Nicaragua è soltanto uno dei molti paesi in cui l’influenza finanziaria, la corruzione, gli omicidi, lo spaccio di droga, la tratta delle armi e l’estorsione sono stati impiegati per controllare un popolo e servirsi di certe risorse naturali”.

Cosa ne pensa dei metodi della CIA?

“Beh, se volete sapere come controllare una popolazione, come assassinare, trucidare, rapinare, corrompere, ricattare, torturare e uccidere gente innocente, credo che i metodi della CIA siano buoni come quelli di chiunque altro!”

Ma chi è in realtà il suo detective Miller?

“Robert Miller sono io, ma anche voi e chiunque altro si trovi nelle condizioni di cercare di scoprire la verità a proposito di eventi che sono stati oscurati per anni. È un buon uomo che prova ad identificare la verità nonostante le avversità che lo circondano”.

Tutte le sue storie raccontano l’America criminale, perchè?

“Sono stato svezzato fin dall’infanzia grazie alla cultura americana. Sono cresciuto guardando telefim come ‘Starsky and Hutch’, ‘Hawaii Five-O’, ‘Kojak’, ‘Sulle strade di San Francisco’.  Mia nonna era una grande fan dell’età dell’oro di Hollywood ed così ho diviso la mia infanzia con Bogart e la Bacall, con Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Jimmy Stewart e Cary Grant.  Sono stati, in un certo senso, i miei zii e le mie zie.  Ho sempre amato l’atmosfera degli Stati Uniti, la sua diversità di cultura.  Anche la sua politica mi ha sempre affascinato.  E visto che voglio scrivere storie che parlano di cospirazioni politiche, assassinii seriali, conflitti interrazziali, delitti politici e indagini della CIA e del FBI non potevo scegliere una location migliore per i miei romanzi. Le mie storie non funzionerebbero se le ambientassi in piccoli, villaggi verdi e frondosi in cui trovate gli Hobbits!

And when we get to the subject of crime and related areas, well – from my own standpoint – I believe all people are basically good, at least in my view.  The FBI, when speaking of serial killers, talk of situational dynamics.  These are the social, familial, environmental, educational, mental and emotional factors around and about a person that drive them to do the things they do.  I don’t think current mental technologies have given us any kind of an understanding of why people can be so utterly destructive, and they certainly haven’t given us an explanation that has resulted in anything even remotely close to a remedy or a cure, and so we are left dismayed and uncertain about the kind of people that can do the things we choose tow rite about as crime novelists.  What makes a John Wayne Gacy, what makes a Ted Bundy or an Arthur Shawcross?  What, for that matter, makes a Hitler?  We don’t know, and no-one appears to have an explanation.  I think it is a combination of many factors, all of which contribute to the person being pushed over the edge of standard human behaviour characteristics.  There is even now a school of thought that is looking at something called the Exceptional Human Experience – a single occurrence that provokes a reaction in a person that drives them to do something so out-of-character that it defies description and explanation.  There are many theories, yet a theory is only so good as it can open the door to a solution, and we have no solution.  Logically, therefore, we do not have the answer.  Perhaps it is just the case that there is a very small percentage of the population that are truly evil and truly destructive, at least in their actions, if not in their hearts.  I believe that such people are disassociated from the reality that we all routinely perceive, and they are somehow resolving a long-ago problem that they do not see as anything but a continuous and current problem.  They kill ‘enemies’, believing that they are under threat from their ‘enemies’.  An intense paranoia perhaps.  They associate one type of personality with a personality that was a danger to them in the past, and now they are just fighting back in order to preserve their own life and well-being.  But that, once again, is a theory, and we already have too many theories and not enough answers!  And so, as an author, I have the profoundly fortunate opportunity to research, to write, to study, to learn, to create characters and stories, to make things up, to lie for a living!  I have never forgotten how much work it took to get published, and how much work it takes to continue being published.  I write for myself, and I write for readers.  If I ever start to write for money, then I know it will be time to stop.  I don’t believe that day will ever come.  I am excited about releasing this book.  I think this is an important book, perhaps sensitive, contentious, a difficult subject, but nevertheless challenging and provocative.”

Perchè ha scelto di aprire il suo “Un semplice atto di violenza” con una donna che viene uccisa mentre guarda “La vita è una cosa meravigliosa” di Frank Capra?

“Perché quel film rappresenta a tal punto la quinta essenza dell’”essere americani” da essere in contraddizione esplicita con quello che sta accadendo dietro le scene.  La CIA, l’FBI ed il governo federale esistono per preservare quella “American way of life” e pare, a chi li osserva da vicino, che questa difesa preveda l’invasione di altri paesi, il controllo di altri governi, l’asservimento di altri popoli e l’uccisione dei nemici, indipendentemente dal fatto che quei nemici siano reali o immaginari. Penso di aver scelto quel film di Capra perché rappresenta alla perfezione la contraddizione fra la realtà e il sistema di controllo americano”.

Quanto scrivere un noir ti da la possibilità di parlare di problemi sociali?

Jean-Patrick Manchette, a French author, said that crime was the best form of writing for exposing society.  He said that crime fiction – more than any other genre – held up a mirror to society.  I agree with him.  In noir we can talk about justice, politics ethics, social problems, crime and all else that troubles us. 

Cosa ti piace dello stile noir?

The opportunity it gives me to really write about troubled people.  The opportunity it gives me to make a comment about those things that interest me.  A noir book can be a thriller, a police procedural, a murder investigation, a historical saga, a romance, a human drama, an epic, or it can be a small story about one life.  I love that flexibility and scope. 

Ci puoi parlare un po’ del tuo ultimo romanzo “Saints of New York”, nacora inedito in Italia?

In the early part of 2008, just a couple of days after Obama had been inaugurated, I had the good fortune to go to Washington with the BBC to make a little feature piece about ‘A Simple Act of Violence’.  During that Washington trip I had the great fortune to spend time with people from the FBI, the Washington Post, and even the lead detective on the Washington sniper case, June Boyle.  I spent four hours in a snow-covered childrens’ playground in Fairfax County, Virginia, and here she spoke of her life, her experiences, her vocation as a detective.  Towards the end of our discussion I asked her – if she could – to summarise her lifestyle, her work, her vocation – in some soundbites.  She was pensive for a while, and then said, ‘No two victims are created equal.  If you come from one side of the city, well your murder might be investigated by five or six detectives.  However, if you come from another side of the city, your murder could be one of five or six I am investigating alone’.  She said it was a view that had been shared by herself and the Fire Chief.  The Fire Chief said he had never put out a fire in a rich white guy’s house.  Secondly she said something that sent a chill up my spine.  ‘I have a work cellphone,’ she told me, ‘and when it rings…well, every time it rings there’s a dead person at the end of it.  It could be a domestic, it could be a twelve year-old in pieces in a dumpster, it could be a serial killing victim or a hit-and-run.  Whoever it is, and whatever the reason for their death, my day starts when their day ends.’ I thought about that for a long time.  I considered the kind of effect such a job would have on your life.  Could you keep a marriage together?  Could you raise kids?  Could you go out and enjoy a ballgame, a barbecue, a weekend in the country with that kind of shadow hanging over you all the time?  Perhaps, perhaps not. 

After I returned from Washington I started to think about forgotten victims.  I looked at the fact that something in the region of eight hundred and fifty-thousand Missing Persons Reports are filed each year in the USA alone.  I considered the fact that ninety-three percent of abduction victims are dead within three hours…dead before anyone even knows they’re missing.  I thought about the ones that were never found, the bodies never located, the parents never knowing what really happened to their son or daughter.  I imagined what that would do to your life.  Would you ever be able to let go, to get over it, to carry on?  I didn’t believe so.

That was where my central character, Frank Parrish, came from for ‘Saints of New York’.  That simple meeting in Virginia was where ‘Saints of New York’ was born – as an idea, a vague fleeting image, a feeling of the kind of story I would like to write that dealt with the obsession of one policeman to learn the truth of what had really happened to a young victim.  Why?  Because if he didn’t, no-one else would.  The victim – a teenage girl – was a nobody, someone who had fallen through the net, someone about whom no-one really cared.  Until Parrish decided to care.  Until he decided to learn the truth of her fate, no matter what it took.

And so I started writing, and – as with all books – it became consuming, something I thought about all the time, something I worked at furiously.  ‘Driven’, my wife calls me, and perhaps I am.  It became an important story to tell, not out of any high-minded and pretentious view that I had ‘something important to say’.  Quite the opposite.  I was humbled by it in a strange kind of way.  Writing about someone like Parrish made me all-too-aware of the fact that there are thousands of people who spend their lives in the service of others, who sacrifice personal security, stability, family, vacations – all the things we take for granted – in an effort to help others less fortunate.  ‘Forgotten victims’ was the phrase that came to mind time and again, but as I wrote the book I started to consider the ‘forgotten saviours’ even more.  These were the real ‘Saints of New York’, the real saints of any city, any neighbourhood, where such work is undertaken by self-effacing and anonymous people, people often criticized and harassed, people viewed as corrupt or self-serving, when – in reality – they were quite the opposite.

‘Saints of New York’ is not an easy read.  I didn’t want it to be, never intended it to be anything other than brutal and harsh.  All I wished was that it would convey some small part of the emotional effect I had experienced when I spent time in Washington with June Boyle from Homicide, with Brad Garrett from the FBI.  I wanted to present some small part of the reality of their lives, to get under the reader’s skin, to make them feel how I felt as I listened to these people.  That was what I wanted to do, to tell that story, to share that viewpoint of humanity.  And I hope that is what I have achieved.  I am proud of ‘Saints of New York’.  It is the eighth book to be released in the UK, and a book I hope that people will enjoy.  But the main thing is the feeling of the thing, the emotion it evokes.  Truth be told, I care little whether people remember my name, even the name of the book, but yet – when reminded of that book six months after having read it – I would consider it the highest compliment if they were still able to recall how it made them feel.  That’s what I like about the books I read, and that’s what I am still trying to accomplish with every book I write”.

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