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Book Details
The Colletta Cassettes
Liguria, Italy. Summer 1978.
The Kentish family are on holiday in idyllic medieval village of Colletta. Sixteen-year-old Sebastian is smitten with Rosetta, the hotel cleaner and waitress, much to his snobbish mother’s dismay, while his younger brother and their fellow hotel guests are obsessed by the World Cup, hosted by the murderous military junta in Argentina.
The boys’ father, Peter Kentish, has very different motivations for the trip. An investigative journalist, he spends much of his time interviewing a mysterious American, a disillusioned ex-CIA agent.
As Kentish uncovers the shocking extent of Operation Gladio, he delves into some of Italy’s darkest secrets. Darker still is the involvement of the USA. Those complicit will do anything to ensure that the truth is buried. For good.
Excerpt from The Colletta Cassettes by Bruno Noble
Context: Liguria, Italy, 1978. The Kentish Family, including their two sons, 16 year old Sebastian and 10 year old Dominic are driving towards Colletta, where they will spend two weeks on holiday.
‘Are we nearly there yet?’ asked Dominic as a joke, knowing full well that Are we there yet? and Are we nearly there? were tolerated by his father but that the tautology wasn’t.
‘Almost, if your father continues driving at this speed,’ said Mrs Kentish as she looked at the speedometer. ‘Peter, what’s got into you?’
Mr Kentish nodded in the direction of his rear-view mirror. ‘It’s those chaps who were behind us at the toll. They’ve been following us. And now they want to overtake.’
Mr Kentish changed down a gear before he took a corner and accelerated out of it. The Alfa Romeo’s engine noise reverberated off the rock wall bordering the road.
‘Peter! Slow down!’ Mrs Kentish gripped the door handle.
Sebastian swung into Dominic again.
Mr Kentish changed up for a straight and put his foot down. ‘I can’t believe it! He’s making a move!’ The road narrowed. ‘Ha! That’ll teach him!’
‘Peter!’
Mr Kentish, in a right-hand drive car, couldn’t always see what was coming before his wife could. She emitted a cry. The four breathed in deeply. The van’s long hooting faded into the distance behind them.
They came out of the turn into a short straight and then a left turn. They passed a couple of cottages in the blink of an eye.
‘I can’t believe it!’ exclaimed Mr Kentish. ‘Now he’s flashing me!’
‘Peter! Think of the children!’ Mrs Kentish gripped the dashboard with both hands.
Sebastian didn’t know whether to be afraid or elated. Dominic felt for his brother’s hand and held it tightly.
They came out of another turn into another straight.
Mr Kentish double de-clutched and accelerated. Sebastian was pressed into the back of his seat. An Alfa Romeo in full voice was the most glorious sound in the world, he decided.
‘Damn!’ Mr Kentish’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. ‘He’s stuck fast behind me!’
The Lancia pulled to the left and drew parallel with the Alfa, its driver laughing, his black hair beating about his clean-shaven face in the wind. The passenger was so close that Sebastian fancied he could reach out and touch him and as the Lancia pressed ahead the passenger, now just inches from Sebastian’s mother, turned sideways and stared at her. Sebastian could see his beard’s stubble, flecks of grey in his sideburns, the oil in his hair, a scar on his chin, the gold of one molar in a row of stained, yellow teeth and the thick links of the gold chain around his neck. The whine of the Lancia’s labouring motor, only just heard above the Alfa’s bellowing exhaust and, above them both, what sounded like the same tinny pop song they had heard at the tollbooth, receded as the Lancia pulled ahead.
Mrs Kentish rested her hand on her husband’s arm. ‘Just let them go. Don’t do anything stupid.’
Resignedly, Mr Kentish decelerated. ‘Well, we are fully laden,’ he muttered. ‘Still, to be overtaken by that rust-bucket…’
The Alfa slowed. To Sebastian’s surprise, so did the Lancia. Having sped ahead of the Alfa by a good distance, its brake lights flashed red and then stayed red. It skidded and stopped in the middle of the road, its brake lights illuminating the cloud of dust behind it like the red eyes of a mythical monster in a fog. Mr Kentish had no alternative but to brake, and the Alfa came to a stop only a car’s length from the Lancia.
Mrs Kentish tightened her grip on her husband’s arm. ‘Wind the windows up. Lock the doors,’ she commanded her family calmly, but the driver had already left his car and was striding towards them, a silhouette of a person now, dark against a pinkening sky. The passenger got out too but stayed by the open car door, leaning nonchalantly against it, one arm along its top and the other along the car roof, his legs crossed at the ankles.
The driver drew close and Sebastian saw that he was still laughing. And then there he was, right by the passenger door of the Alfa, leaning down and looking in and holding up the Kentish’s leather travel bag.
‘Hey! Mister!’ He inclined his head briefly at Mr and Mrs Kentish and acknowledged Sebastian and Dominic with a narrowing of his eyes. ‘You left this at the – come si dice, casello? You left this,’he finished by saying, and held in his hand the bag that contained their passports, their money, insurance papers, their travellers’ cheques – their life in mainland Europe.
Sheepishly, Mrs Kentish took receipt of it. ‘Thank you. Grazie,’ she said weakly.
Mr Kentish looked from the driver to the travel bag and back again and opened and closed his mouth.
The driver leant forward a little and said, across Mrs Kentish to her husband, ‘That was fun! Yes? Great! Much funs! Where are you going? We raise you there!’
‘No. No thank you,’ said Mrs Kentish. ‘We don’t race anymore.’
The driver looked from Mr Kentish to his wife and back. ‘Bene!’ He nodded. ‘We don’t raise any more.’ It was implicitly understood that, were it not for his wife, Mr Kentish would have relished a race. The driver stood straight and drummed his fingers on the roof of the Alfetta, directly above Sebastian. ‘Bella macchina! Arriverderci. Buonasera!’ His back to the Kentishes, he waved goodbye as he returned to his companion and his car. They drove off in a bolt of bright blue.
Mrs Kentish rifled through the travel bag and the envelopes it contained. ‘It’s all there,’ she said.
‘Well, of course it would be,’ said Mr Kentish.
An insect entered the car from Sebastian’s open window and made a lazy escape out of Dominic’s. The boys watched it come and go.
‘I must admit,’ said Mrs Kentish, ‘to feeling a little ashamed.’
‘So do I,’ said Mr Kentish, looking straight ahead.
‘Come on,’ said Mrs Kentish. ‘Let’s get to Colletta before the sun sets.’
Purchase Link – https://amzn.to/4oO4JUj
Author Bio
Bruno Noble study Philosophy and French literature at Southampton University. A circuitous route selling advertising space in financial magazines took him to the City where, amongst other things, he wrote markets and investment reports while impatient to write a novel. His first, ‘A Thing of the Moment’, was published by Unbound in 2018, and his second, ‘The Colletta Cassettes’, was published by Indie Novella in 2022 before being re-published by Inkspot Publishing in 2025. Â
Having enjoyed working collaboratively with other writers when he joined the Collier Street Fiction Group in 2021, Bruno started a part-time (two-year) Creative Writing M.A. at Birkbeck University in 2024.
Social Media Links – Insta: @inkspotpub FB: Inkspotpublishing
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