Duca Lamberti

Lamberti is a physician turned detective and the main character in Scerbanenco's Milano Quartet of crime novels: A Private Venus (1966), Traitors to All (1966), I ragazzi del massacro (1968) and I milanesi ammazzano al sabato (1969).

Duca Lamberti is the main character in four crime novels by the Ukrainian-born Italian writer Giorgio Scerbanenco, conventionally known as the Milano Quartet, published from 1966 to 1969.

The son of a police officer, he is a former physician who lost his medical licence after having performed euthanasia, and is approached by a colleague of his deceased father to help with a sensitive investigation in Milan.

[1] Lamberti appears as a guilt-ridden and cynical misfit in the shadow of the Italian economic boom of the 1960s, and was written as a contrast to the shallowness of the mainstream culture of Milan at the time.

He contrasts not only to shallow post-war culture, but also to traditional Italian society, through his family which consists of his sister and her illegitimate child, and his girlfriend who is an eccentric philosophy teacher.