'The Fenoglio method: the essence of the story of the Marshal and the Barese clans, the basis of the TV series on Rai 1.'

In a complex archipelago of mafia-like criminal gangs providing sanctuary for criminals and bases for the organization, nevertheless on the periphery of business transactions, the organization independently develops and emerges. The dizzying takeover of the fortress takes place on two fronts: internationally, new alliances and the flow of money provided by the Adriatic route of smuggling and drugs; and a bloody military strategy with attacks and terrorist attacks to settle old scores and assert new equilibria created by the split. Here is the upward curve of organized crime in Bari, which begins to fester dangerously in the early 1990s, here is the criminal history at the heart of Gianrico's novel''Carofilho's "The Fenoglio Method - Cold Summer," which airs on Rai 1 starting November 27.

The television series "Fenoglio Method" on Rai 1: plot and cast

The criminal escalation that left a bloody stain in Bari in the 1990s is finally appearing on small screens with the series "The Fenoglio Method - Cold Summer", which is broadcast in first primetime on Rai1 and consists of four episodes. It is a co-production between Rai Fiction and Clemart, based on the second book in the trilogy dedicated to Marshal Fenoglio, titled Cold Summer, by Gianrico Carofiglio. It is directed by Alessandro Casale. It stars Alessio Boni as Pietro Fenoglio, a Turin-born carabinieri who finds himself in Bari during the war between the'The 'clans' that began after the burning of the Petruzzelli Theater. At the same time, crime stories are unfolding in Puglia, which, on the one hand, run parallel to the events that take place around the atentates of the judges Falcone and Borselino, and on the other hand, remain less known and less studied. The series also stars Giulia Vecchio and Paolo Sassanelli, who play the roles of chief prosecutor Gemma D'\''Angelo and carabinieri Antonio Pellecchia.

Carofiglio as prosecutor: the story of the novel "Cold Summer "

Carofiglio's novels draw their inspiration from a reality that the writer knows well. The author was deputy prosecutor of the Regional Anti-Camorra Office in Bari: he not only dealt with bar groups for a long time, but''also conducted investigations in Foja and Cerignola. In the second book of Marshal Fenoglio's trilogy, Cold Summer, there are references to the underworld that Carofiglio encountered while working as an anti-Camorra prosecutor: the random burnings widespread in Cerignola and Andria, the contacts related to the drug trade between clans from Cerignola and affiliated members of the'\''drained families'\''of the Mafia in Milan. The book and TV series also tells the story of one repentant man who reveals the real methods of involvement with the clan-bareses, as documented in several investigations by the Regional Anti-Camorra Office in Bari.

From fiction to reality

The criminal brutality that has engulfed Bari begins at the moment,'. 'when the Teatro Petruzzelli has been in ruins for months and is still an empty shell on the main street of Corso Cavour: outside, the walls are covered in shiny red lacquer, but inside, the theater is a ruin, the remains of the fire that destroyed it on the night of October 27, 1991. The theater, a symbol of a city that dreamed and thought big, instead stands as a metaphor for those years of Bari: a soothing facade that hides half-truths (only the perpetrators were found responsible for the arson) and unsolved mysteries. The fire in Petruzzelli has already been extinguished, but the criminal conflagration that engulfed the city is just beginning to flare up.

The rift and struggle between the clans. In the ruins, the main part of the city, the old town of Casale, is revealed from within, where the struggle between the old clan,''led by Antonio Capriati, and a growing group around Raffaele Laraspata (later to become an officer of justice), who begins a massive recruitment drive. Young Napoleons and former robbers get involved with clans willing to take on guns or pistols in order to gain a place in the soaring hierarchy. The old part of town, with narrow alleys snaking precariously through clusters of white houses and squares, is revealed as the epicenter of a crime earthquake felt everywhere.

Albania and Montenegro: a new quality pad. Throughout the 1980s, Bari was on the periphery. The crime field in Puglia was controlled by the Sacra Corona Unità in Salento and the Societa Fojana. Other dangerous and violent''Criminal gangs were entrenched in Cerignola and Andria, cities affected by the phenomenon of kidnapping on demand, as well as in Trani, where the figure of Salvatore Annacondia, a boss (ex-pentita) from Cosa Nostra, who would get out to dispose of the bodies of the murdered and burn them in burning car tires, stood out. Suddenly, everything changes. The bar clans have sensed that it's time for an upgrade and have formed alliances to take over the new businesses that have appeared on the horizon of the Adriatic Sea and which promise huge profits. A flood of rubber boats from Albania guarantees huge drug money, and neighboring Montenegro, long a golden haven for fugitives, is becoming a base for boats supplying smuggled cigarettes.

Bari is a powder keg. Going up in flames, Bari turns into a powder cellar. Ruined buildings, niches of historic structures, basements, abandoned farms, sewer manholes, every corner becomes a place suitable for storing weapons; even the bottom of the sea mirror of San Nicolas Bay, where the colored boats of fishermen are moored, which today are captured''by tourists, turns out to be an invaluable underwater arsenal. From the center to the suburbs.

The escalation of crime is approaching the old heart of the city, but it's also embracing its suburbs. While the Iapigia neighborhood continues to be the untouchable feud of boss Savino Parisi, who encourages Mafia worlds in the name of business and is the administrator of one of the biggest shopping malls in southern Italy, in other neighborhoods the clan map is changing radically. Starting in Enziteto, near the coast of Santo Spirito, the northern coastline along which smugglers' boats used to ply before urban renewal, is proving to be the perfect place for a new clan led by Carmine Piperis (in prison he renounced his criminal past), an ally of Laraspata'. 'Here, in the neighborhood now called San Pio, where something is missing but the name of one street is called "Road to Happiness" and another is called "Road to Friendship," the dominant clan controls the drug market as well as illegal residential occupancy and provides apartments to new members of the partnership.

Numerous minors and innocent victims. In the war of the early 1990s, dozens of minors are recruited: first they are used as sentries, then as "patrol boys" responsible for storing and supplying weapons to groups of fire at the right moment. Finally, they are directly used in the hapless. They are repeated with impressive cadence: special actions as well as symbolic ones to create social anxiety within the mafia''strategies of those years. To such an extent that in the old part of Bari many are forced to leave their homes and move elsewhere to escape the threat of revenge that does not spare the innocent. As happened in June 1996, when an open fire team shelled the two-story building where the Capriati family: the facade pierced by bullets, the police counted more than 30 bullets, a child aged 7 was wounded by a bullet fragment. In November of the same year, also in the historic center, a schoolboy of 12 years old has to leave the school: from a family among the "losers" families, there is a risk of retaliation. The same decision for the other 11 schoolchildren, and a year later, a 9-year-old child is assigned an escort: every morning he is in the classroom with two city police officers.

Prevented'. 'murder. Police and carabinieri tighten control, risky areas are guarded. The shooting continues, but many initiated attacks are successfully prevented, as tragedy strikes, bypassing Kjorl Square, one of the entrances to the historic center. A stone's throw from Sparano's main square, the police stop a white van and arrest three members of the crew: when they are stopped, they are still under the influence of cocaine, armed and ready to shoot in front of people to avenge the murder. Arrests and a new clan. The investigations continue with their persistent rhythm. In the following months, hundreds of people end up in jail: celebrities and lieutenants, assassins and right-hand men, dealers and sentries, teenagers who are learning how to become bosses, those already on trial, fugitives and those,'''who never aroused suspicion, enriched the frying pans of the organizations. Many clans and firebrands have been wiped out, although a new clan is already emerging on the criminal scene, which soon becomes hegemonic, under the leadership of boss Domenico Stricciulio. And in the pages of Investigations, the story of the long season of horror, the violent breakout of Bari's tearaway clans into the larger Mafia, is solidified. It's the same story that Gianrico Carofiglio tells as fiction in his novel Cold Summer, which was aired on Rai1 on Monday, November 27, primetime with the series The Fenoglio Method.