I received this book as a gift decades ago from high school classmates on the occasion of my birthday. The boys, then much more enlightened than me, chose this gift instead of something much more material (and perhaps the most desired). I thanked him warmly and put it in the family library, reading through old school, side by Cuore by Edmondo De Amicis and school memories of John Moscow. Then, years later, I happened to see the film of the same name , gorgeous, directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Al Pacino and, with his tail between his legs, I picked up the book and devoured it.
The story of Serpico, the cop Frank Serpico , è la storia di un cavaliere solitario sui generis, agente anticonformista che combatte una battaglia, durissima, contro la corruzione che dilaga nella Polizia newyorchese alla fine degli anni 60 e nei primi 70: "La subcultura imponeva le proprie regole. Se un poliziotto era, diciamo, cattolico, andava a messa tutte le domeniche, perché altrimenti rischiava l'inferno; ma accettare bustarelle non gli sembrava un peccato."
Peter Maas (1929-2001) è molto efficace nel raccontare con il ritmo del giallo d'azione una vicenda costruita sulla base di verbali e documentazioni. A tal proposito mi è tornata alla mente una confidenza di un amico che, grande lettore, mi disse di aver perso interest in pure fiction and that he converted to the novels based on true stories, because "the stories are true and most are beautiful." Here, Serpico is a true story and tells a New York real, raw and dangerous as the city was in those years. There is a lot of Brooklyn, where the officer lived at the beginning: "About two and a half one morning, headed to Fulton Street, a wide busy road that now is the commercial center of Brooklyn, but on which, when Serpico was assigned all'Ottantunesimo, opened only decrepit shops ") but also a lot Village where Frank moved gradually so that we can define: " still lives in his parents' home in Brooklyn, but had gotten into the habit of renting, from time to time, for a month at a time, furnished accommodation in the Village. " And it is the Village in those years, one of the most interesting New Yorkers of the novel. Serpico lives, dresses, thinks and walks like one of the many writers, artists, poets, children of the Beat Generation and close to the hippie movement that roam the neighborhood.
The Village is not the Serpico-chic residential neighborhood it is today and the atmosphere of these pages is one of the strengths of the book, regardless dal'intensa, exciting and - I remember once - true story of the protagonist.
As usual, in the case of out of print books, the illustration is my personal copy of the 1975 and indicated that the latest edition is available.
Serpico, Peter Maas, Superbur Rizzoli, 1980 
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