Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m Cesario Picca (1972), I was born and bred in Salento (South Italy) and I live and work in Bologna as a crime and judicial reporter. I’va already published (2005), the juridical essay Ungagged – the developing concept of freedom of the press. My love for thrillers blossomed with Murder in the Tremiti Isles, in which the main character is a reporter from Salento, Rosario (Saru) Santacroce. He will soon be involved in many other intrigues and adventures like you can read in Gioco mortale where you can find Saru with the same likeable verve and curiosity. In 2002 I was awarded the Piero Passetti prize for “chronicler of the year”. I’ve been a speaker or moderator at numerous conferences and has participated in many radio and television. broadcasts.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My last legal thriller is Gioco mortale – delitto nel mondo della trasgressione. I write about an omicide in the world of transgression. There’s not an Eglish versione, yet. My first novel was Murder in The Tremiti Isles. I imagine the character Rosario Saru Santacroce, a crime and judicial journalist.
A wealthy tourist from Bologna has been killed in the Tremiti Isles and the reporter Rosario Santacroce, a nice, talkative and charismatic Salento journalist, writes about the murder in the beautiful contest of Tremiti Islands (Puglia, South Italy). During the reading you can hear the sea, see the sun, smell good food, imagine sex meetings.
In this novel you can find suspense, love of good food, love of life with a smile on your face. Because even tragedies and difficulties are best approached with good humor. A sort of ode to life is what Rosario Saru Santacroce offers his readers.
The protagonist of this thriller is a forty year old Salento reporter who lives in Bologna and works for a local newspaper. A rough and rational man, talkative, charismatic, ready to savor every moment of life as if it was the last. Nicknamed Saru (the nickname that is given in Salento to those named like him), he covers the city’s crime beat. As often happens, occasionally work also follows him on holidays because a real reporter is destined (almost) never to unplug. And that is probably why he gets entangled in the murder of a wealthy tourist from Bologna who like him is on vacation in the Tremiti Islands.
Saru had met the victim the day before during a boat trip and the two had hit it off. The first to rush to the scene of the crime was none other than Saru and for that reason he ends up among the suspects. Journalists of all the national newspapers arrive on the island but Saru always manages to get a bit more news than the others thanks to his friendship with the marshal of the local station who hails from the same part of Italy as him.
The story is peppered with amusing expressions in the Salento dialect related to the food, tastes and customs of that part of Italy surrounded by two seas and contains the right mix of eroticism and suspense. The author reveals the often humorous interplay between fellow-journalists, refers to real news stories and packs the investigation with twists right up to the surprise ending.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t think so. I’m inspired by the reality, by my work, by what I see and I hear, by the life. I love hearing, seeing and feeling what happens around me and I write it in a romance way. I mix real life experiences and imagination. But I think reality is the most important mine we can draw fully from. When I feel a story and I have many elements to write it I start writing. For example, some months ago I read about a prisoner’s escape and my fantasy turned on pushing me writing a new episode with the character Saru Santacroce like protagonist in his Salento.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I usually read classics and Bible. I don’t have a favorite author. It depends on the moment and on my readings. In the past I read Edgar Wallace, Ellery Queen, Cornell Woolrich, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Jeffery Deaver, John Grisham, Ken Follett.
What are you working on now?
I’m working at the third adventure of Saru Santacroce. In this novel the journalist writes about the omicide of a prisoner escaped from jail. The story is set in Salento, in the South of Italy, a land kissed by two seas, Adriatic and Jonio. The story is peppered with amusing expressions in the Salento dialect related to the food, tastes and customs of that part of Italy surrounded by two seas and contains the right mix of eroticism and suspense. The author reveals the often humorous interplay between fellow-journalists, refers to real news stories and packs the investigation with twists right up to the surprise ending.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I use all social networks.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
They must not give up easily. If they have good and interesting stories to tell they have to write them. Readers are not stupid sheeps as someone think. So if they like an author they support him despite the only thought massifying or usual editors or newspapers’ reviews.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
The importance of working believing in what you do.
What are you reading now?
Now I’m writing my third Saru’s adventure in Salento.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I love writing and telling stories so I hope continuing doing it and amusing readers otherwise I must thinking what doing when I’ll grow.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
First of all a survival guide. Then, because I usually read classics and Bible, I think I would read Odyssey, Aeneid and Iliad. I hope these books will be good to expire my spare time waiting for someone to bring me back. Otherwise, If I feel good in that place, I hope finding my Friday (but woman).
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