Sciascia Leonardo — The Day of the Owl [17]

Briefly the Sicilian silence is broken and a dark corner or two illumined; then silence and darkness re-descend, and the inertia of impunity is reestablished. — Sciascia Leonardo, The Day of the Owl, 17

Note

A clean summation of the novel’s tragic mechanism — the detective solves the crime but the institutional closure of the upper reaches defeats punishment. Elegantly balanced sentence, ‘the inertia of impunity’ a memorable coinage.