{"id":1038,"date":"2009-12-04T18:44:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T02:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/12\/amanda-knox-and-italian-noir.html"},"modified":"2009-12-04T18:44:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-05T02:44:00","slug":"amanda-knox-and-italian-noir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2009\/12\/amanda-knox-and-italian-noir.html","title":{"rendered":"Amanda Knox and Italian Noir"},"content":{"rendered":"

THE strange case of Amanda Knox — a cute American exchange student accused of killing her British roomate — just took a yet stranger turn as she was convicted<\/a> of the murder as part of a bizarre sex game. (She is sentenced to 26 years in prison; the family will appeal.)<\/p>\n

The fact that this took place in Perugia, the capital of the lovely and green Italian region of Umbria, known as the land of the saints — is only element that makes me think of the consummate Italian noir writer, the late Englishman Michael Dibdin. In fact, Dibdin even taught at the University of Perugia, where Knox studied — he set his first novel, “Ratking,” there — and settled in her hometown of Seattle before he died in 2007.<\/p>\n

Dibdin captured a tone of weirdness and irony so well, and perhaps because he was a foreigner, could see through Italian charm — and unravel Italian bureaucracy and political intrigue — like a great cultural critic.<\/p>\n

HERE<\/a> is my LAT story on the author and his work. Part of what’s fascinating about Dibdin’s career is the way it demonstrates — as Pico Iyer has so eloquently observed — the strength and flexibility of the Chandleresque detective novel (born of course in LA) in wide-ranging international settings.<\/p>\n

For those new to Didbin’s work, I’d recommend that debut, or the more poltical “Medusa.”<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/div>\n

This Knox case is likely to get stranger still, I’ll bet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE strange case of Amanda Knox — a cute American exchange student accused of killing her British roomate — just took a yet stranger turn as she was convicted of the murder as part of a bizarre sex game. (She is sentenced to 26 years in prison; the family will appeal.) The fact that this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[363,35,361,93,134,362,242,360,359],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1038","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-amanda-knox","7":"category-books","8":"category-dibdin","9":"category-italian","10":"category-noir","11":"category-pico-iyer","12":"category-raymond-chandler","13":"category-seattle","14":"category-umbria","15":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}