MASSIMO CARLOTTO MEETS me, empty-handed, outside his favourite gun shop. With his nervy entourage, fat Cuban cigar and gold watch, he sounds and looks like a mafia don as he crunches my fingers in a bruising handshake.
But the brooding similarity is, perhaps, not too surprising. Bestselling author Carlotto - Italy's answer to Ian Rankin - spent seven years in prison for a murder he didn't commit and his best friends, still, are gangsters and ex-cons. 'At least,' he says with a half-smile, 'I will never run out of material.'
Like many crime writers, he treads a fine line between fact and fiction. The only real difference between him and Alligator - his vaguely misogynist, jazz-loving jailbird-turned-gumshoe - is how much they drink. 'I drink more than him.'
This is hard to imagine, despite the beige eyeballs. For Alligator - so-called for his love of a vile cocktail that unimaginably combines calvados, Drambuie and an apple - starts drinking at breakfast. 'It's true,' says Carlotto. 'I hold my calvados much better than he does.'
Who am I to argue? Few would. With his rugby physique, unflinching gaze and 'connected' chums, Carlotto bristles.
His latest novel, The Master of Knots (Orion), is a nasty tale of sado-masochism, death by fisting and snuff movies. 'Carlotto tells more than readers may care to know about the S&M scene,' wrote London's Sunday Telegraph.
The depiction is so gruesomely accurate that the book has caused fury back home. 'I've received death threats, sure,' he says. 'Those perverts didn't like what I'd written. They telephoned, sent horrific e-mails, telling me exactly what they were going to do to me. Bugger me to death, basically.