"Published to unanimous acclaim in Europe and winner of Italy's prestigious Viareggio Prize for fiction, Procedura introduces a writer of world-class fiction." "At the end of a none too brilliant career, a judge, sent to Sardinia from the mainland, lives alone in a small town, broken relationships and partings left behind him. When a colleague suddenly dies, he is entrusted with the investigation and soon finds himself entwined in the most intimate knowledge of judge Valerio Garau's life - from his rich, orphaned childhood with its hints of scandal to the red-and-blue capsule with its grain of cyanide that one morning caused him to fall backward among the cafe tables while joking with his mistress." "Was Garau's death suicide, mistake, or murder? His ex-wife or his mistress, his priestly uncle or his blind aunt, his colleagues or his lover's illustrious and influential husband: all of these could be suspected of wanting to free themselves of him. And who was Judge Garau? A cynic, a seducer, a liar, a naif? The investigator must reconstruct a life from the people and effects left behind: yellowed photographs of distant carnivals, archeological finds collected for who knows what passion or pretext, stolen letters, forced locks, police chiefs, homosexuals, and schoolmistresses..."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved