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.

Frank Wolff as Duca Lamberti in the film La morte risale a ieri sera (1970)