Sidewalk confessional by Pete Pescatore - A review

From Milan-based author and journalist Pete Pescatore (aka Pete Haddock, so a nice pun on the name) comes ‘Sidewalk confessional: A short crime story’, which, released in 2015, is the follow-up to his debut ‘Suicide Italian style’ from the year before.

The story follows a fictionalised version of Pete Pescatore, who, after his editor rudely wakes him up, receives the information that someone has killed a sixteen-year-old boy in Milan.

Told to find the story, and make it about drugs, Pete leaves his apartment only to find that the killing took place at the square down the road and that he knew the victim.

Unwilling to accept the drugs angle that others have forced upon him, Pete asks around and discovers his neighbours either take a vow of silence, avoidance or grumbling and in the end the only witness to what happened is the victim.

Despite a bit of a plodding middle act, ‘Sidewalk confessional’ is a solid story, following a simple structure across its eighteen pages. Although well written, it failed to really excite or have the impact it perhaps should have had, even with a compelling final act.

I think the reason for this is that the short story format didn’t work for Pete’s investigation, making it seemed rushed in terms of characters and their inconsistent interaction, but more importantly, it didn’t do justice to the gravitas of the situation that the author puts into place.

Rather, the author would have done better to expand the short story and to allow more space for the investigative aspects to breathe. This would have resulted in the revelations have more impact rather than flying by and leaving little impression.

Equally, not having read the full-length novel, I didn’t really know Pete. Understandably, in a short story you get a snapshot and little background, but lines were dedicated to his love of basketball which, while shared with the victim, really was irrelevant and gave me no further insight into the protagonist. So, the author wasted words on inconsequential bits while leaving the crux of the story unexplored.

Also, despite the wonderful cover, I felt Milan was underutilised (while the Duomo from the cover was not mentioned at all) but with it being a short story I guess there wasn’t space for a tour, and this story was meant as an expansion of the character for those who read the novel.

Overall, ‘Sidewalk confessionals’ was enjoyable but not exciting, and I felt the author had a wonderful concept but would have been better developing it further.