A Private Venus

by Giorgio Scerbanenco

Genres: General Fiction; Classics; Mystery; International Crime & Mystery; Noir

Synopsis

In the first installment of the prizewinning Duca Lamberti Quartet from the godfather of Italian noir, a disgraced doctor investigating the murder of a young woman uncovers a shocking network of trafficking and exploitation in 1960s Milan.

Newly released from prison, and without his medical license, Duca Lamberti is at a loose end. When Milan’s police superintendent points him toward a job—as a favor to Duca’s late father, who was a trusted member of the force—he is not in a position to refuse. And so Duca finds himself employed by the wealthy plastics magnate Pietro Auseri, tasked with finding a medical intervention for Auseri’s son, Davide, who is slowly drinking himself to death.

At first, there seems to be nothing wrong with the young man: he’s healthy, reasonably good-looking, set up for a bright future. But Duca discovers that Davide has a terrible secret—one that threatens to consume him. Following a trail linked to the unsolved murder of a young woman, Duca unravels a dark underworld beneath the glitz and glamour of the cosmopolitan city, one that destroys young women like the one whose path crossed with Davide’s. Gruff, world-weary, and disillusioned, Duca nevertheless finds himself driven to seek truth and justice on behalf of those abandoned and cast aside by the modern world.

First published in 1966, A Private Venus introduces one of the most compelling and memorable protagonists in crime fiction, from a master of Italian noir.

Release date: October 13, 2026

Publisher: Modern Library

Print pages: 256

Sample

Chapter 1

After three years in prison he had learned to pass the time with whatever was at hand, but for the first ten minutes he smoked a cigarette without thinking of any game to play. It was only when he threw the cigarette end down on the gravel drive that it struck him: the number of little stones in the various drives and garden paths was a finite number. Even the number of grains of sand in all the beaches in the world was a finite number that could be calculated, however large it was, and so, staring down at the ground, he started to count. In five square centimeters there might be an average of eighty stones, so he calculated visually the area of all the drives and paths that led to the villa ahead of him and concluded that all the gravel in all the drives, which seemed infinite, consisted of a mere one million six hundred thousand stones, with a ten percent margin of error.

Then, suddenly, there was a crunching sound on the gravel, and he lifted his head for a moment: a man had emerged from the villa and was coming along the biggest drive toward him. Now that the man had appeared he had time to play a game, so, sitting on that small concrete shelf that functioned as a bench, he leaned forward and picked up a handful of stones. The game consisted of guessing two things: one, if the number of stones was an odd or even number, and two, if that number was higher or lower than a chosen number: twenty, for example. To win you had to guess both things. He estimated that he had an even number of stones in his fist, and a number lower than twenty. He opened his fist and counted: he had won, there were eighteen stones.

“I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting, Dr. Lamberti.” The man had come level with him, and his voice was solemn and tired, the voice of a weary emperor. Leaning forward like that, Duca saw only the man’s legs, thin legs inside narrow trousers: a young man’s trousers, although the man wasn’t young, as he saw as soon as he got up to shake the hand he was holding out. He was a middle-aged man, little but powerful, his hair shaved to almost nothing, his beard shaved down to the root, his hand also little but with a grip of steel.

“Good evening,” he said to the little emperor. “Pleased to meet you.” In prison he had learned not to say more than he needed to. At his trial, while Signora Maldrigati’s niece was crying over her murdered aunt, but omitting to mention the millions she had inherited from that same aunt, he had wanted to speak, but his defense lawyer, almost with tears in his eyes, had whispered in his ear that he shouldn’t say a word, not one: he would tell the truth, and the truth is death; anything but the truth in a courtroom, at a trial. Or in life.

“It’s very hot in Milan,” the little man said, and sat down next to him on the concrete bench. “Here in the Brianza, on the other hand, it’s always cool. Do you know the Brianza?”

He couldn’t have called him here to talk about the weather in the Brianza, he was just building up to it. “Yes,” he replied, “as a boy I used to come here by bicycle, Canzo, Asso, the lake.”

“By bicycle,” the little man said. “I used to come here by bicycle, too, when I was young.”

The conversation seemed to be over. In the dusk, the garden was almost dark, some lights went on in the villa, a bus passed on the main road twenty meters below the villa, its horn sounding almost like a piece by Wagner.

“It’s gone out of fashion these days,” the little man resumed, “they all chase the sun on the French Riviera or the islands, whereas here in the Brianza, only half an hour’s drive from Milan, the air’s as clear as if you were in Tahiti. I think it’s because people always want to go a long way from where they are. A place is never beautiful if it’s too close. My son regards this villa as a kind of punishment cell, whenever I tell him to come here he does it as a penance. Maybe he’s right: it may be cooler, but it’s a bit boring.” It was almost dark now, the lighted windows in the villa were the only light. In a different voice, the little man said, “Were you told why I wanted to see you, Dr. Lamberti?”

No, Duca said, he hadn’t been told. What he had been told, though, was who this man who seemed so modest, so simple, really was: one of the magnificent five, in other words one of the top five engineers in the field of plastics, Engineer Pietro Auseri, late fifties, a man who could create anything out of anything; a special kind of plastic was named after him, Auserolo, he had three degrees, his fortune must be considerable, but officially he was only a freelance engineer with an old office in an old street in Milan.

“I thought they would have told you,” the little man said. The tiredness had gone from his voice, only the authority remained, he had clearly said all he had to say on the topics of the weather and tourism.

“All I was told was that you might have a job for me,” Duca said. It was dark now, more lights came on in the villa, a dim trail of light reached as far as the spot where they were.

“Yes, in a way it’s a job,” Auseri said. “Do you mind if we talk here? My son’s in the house and I don’t want you to see him until after we’ve talked.”

“That’s fine by me.” He liked this little middle-aged man: he was no fool. Over the past few years, inside prison and out, Duca had seen whole armies of fools and he could almost tell them from the smell, from a finger, from a single hair in their eyebrows.

“You’re a doctor,” Auseri said.

He didn’t reply immediately, but a few moments later, and in that darkness, in that silence, it was a long pause. “I was. I’m sure you were told.”

“Certainly,” Auseri said, “but you’re still a doctor. And I need a doctor.”

Duca counted the windows in the villa: there were eight of them, four on the ground floor and four on the first floor. “I can’t practice anymore. I can’t even give injections—especially not injections. Weren’t you told?”

“I was told everything, but it doesn’t matter.”

Curious. “If you need a doctor,” Duca said, “and choose one who’s been struck off the register and can’t even prescribe an aspirin, then it must matter a bit.”

“No,” the emperor said, politely but authoritatively. In the darkness he held out the packet of cigarettes. “Do you smoke?”

“I even spent three years in prison.” He took a cigarette and Auseri lit it for him. “For murder.”
“I know,” Auseri said, “but it doesn’t matter.”

Then maybe nothing really mattered.

“My son is an alcoholic,” Auseri said in the darkness, smoking. “He’s in that room on the first floor right now, the only lighted window on the first floor. That’s his room. He must have managed to hide a few bottles of whisky from me, and he’s tanking himself up while he’s waiting for us.”

From his voice, it was obvious that his son didn’t matter all that much to him either.

“He’s twenty-two,” Auseri said, “two meters tall and weighs, I think, ninety kilos. Up until last year he didn’t worry me too much, the only thing that made me a bit sad was that he wasn’t very bright. I couldn’t send him to university, I only managed to get him through his high school exams by bribing his teachers. He’s also very shy and submissive. To be honest, he’s a big lump.”

In other words, tall and stupid. Auseri’s bitter voice seemed to come from out of nowhere, it somehow just materialized in the dark air.

“I wasn’t too upset that he was like that,” Auseri said. “I don’t care about the joy having a genius as a son may bring. When he was nineteen, I sent him to work for Montecatini. He went through all the offices and departments, so that he could learn; he didn’t learn much, but he kept going. Then last year he started drinking. For the first few months he managed to hide his vice, then he started going in late to work, or not going in at all, then I had to keep him at home because he was going into work with whisky bottles, the flat kind, in his pocket. You are listening, aren’t you?”

Oh, yes, in prison he had learned to listen; his cellmates all had long stories to tell, lies of course, stories about how they were innocent, how they’d been ruined by women, every one of them was an Abel killed by Cain or an Adam corrupted by Eve. The engineer, though, was telling him something different, something sadder and more meaningful, and he was really listening. “Of course,” he replied.

“I need to explain a lot of things so that you’ll understand,” Auseri said. In the darkness, his voice did not lose any of its authority, but rather became more stubborn. “My son gets drunk three times a day. By lunchtime he’s completely drunk, he doesn’t eat anything and falls asleep. In the afternoon he gets drunk a second time, then sleeps until dinnertime. At dinner he eats, but he begins with the third course, and falls asleep in his chair. That’s what he’s been doing for most of the past year, unless I’ve physically prevented him.”