Abstract

This paper concerns the phenomenon of the growing presence of magistrates as writers of noir fiction or detective stories in the Italian publishing industry, started at the end of the 1990s. How do this writers experience their double-faced professionalism? Involving the Ockham's razor metaphor, Giancarlo De Cataldo's answer to this question points out the uselessness of elaborate hypothesis. The reflection on both intellectual biographies and some writings of the three judges De Cataldo, Giancarlo Carofiglio e Francesco Caringella, suggests that their narrative choice originates from inner needs. Although they are different in several respects, they all share the theme of justice, the desertion of the "language of jurisprudence", the propensity of explaining to the reader the trial mechanisms within the novel frame.