John Robert Johnson's Writings
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Short Story
Dec.01.2012
The Second State
Filippa Nocentini (an excerpt from The Second State)
Balestra and Berti sat with the engine running in the car park of a fake American burger bar in an industrial estate close to the motorway. Berti's crimson Alfa Romeo Giulietta rumbled and trembled with the passing lorries. The CD player was pumping out 1970s rock classics, causing Balestra to wince...
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Short Story
Nov.26.2012
The Better Craftsman
Hunting, Fighting, Playing
(an extract from The Better Craftsman)
Just about any Sunday he walks these mountains with a bow hung unloaded over his back. It’s just a small affair, a little under a yard, with a cherry-wood tiller, and steel bow, and the arms of the Dukes of Svevia engraved on copper plates along its pear-shaped length. It’s enough to do away...
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Short Story
Nov.26.2012
Servants of Two Masters
dozing scorpion
That familiar metallic stench of wet tiles and asphalt told her that the mist had turned to rain. Mina Balestra ground to a halt at the interchange and the black shape in her rearview finally came into focus. She picked up her battered Nokia and called Berti.
- You call me on Sunday afternoon for a traffic update, Commissario?...
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Politicians and the mafia make a living from control of the same territory: so they either go to war with one another or they come to an agreement.”
—Paolo Borsellino
About John
I'm a senior editor for a major reference publisher in Italy, where I've been working since finishing a doctorate at Oxford University. I've recently self-published three novels and am busy working on the third installment of a series of contemporary crime...
John’s Favorite Books
American Psycho, The Human Stain, White Noise, Disgrace, War and Peace, Madame Bovary, What a Carve Up!, Midnight's Children, A ciascuno il suo, Carrère,...