Background
He was born in Kiev, in what was then the Russian Empire, on 28 July 1911. At an early age, his family immigrated to Rome (Scerbanenco"s father was Ukrainian, his mother was Italian), and then he moved to Milan when he was 18 years old.
He was born in Kiev, in what was then the Russian Empire, on 28 July 1911. At an early age, his family immigrated to Rome (Scerbanenco"s father was Ukrainian, his mother was Italian), and then he moved to Milan when he was 18 years old.
He found work as a freelance writer for many Italian magazines, chief among them Anna Bella before becoming a novelist. His first fiction books were detective novels set in United States of America and clearly inspired by the works of Edgar Wallace and South.S. Van Dine signed with an English-sounding pen name. While Scerbanenco wrote in several genres, he is famous in Italy for his crime and detective novels, many of which have been dramatized in Italian film and television
These include the series of novels with main character Duca Lamberti, a physician struck off the register for having performed a euthanasia, and turned detective (Venere privata - A Private Venus, 1966.
Traditori di tutti - Betrayers of All, 1966. I ragazzi del massacro - The Boys of the Massacre, 1968.
I milanesi ammazzano al sabato - The Milanese kill on Saturday, 1969), as well as Sei giorni di preavviso (Six Days of Notice), his first novel. He died of a heart attack in Milan on 27 October 1969.
As well as in Milan, the writer lived for a long period in Lignano Sabbiadoro, a town on the Adriatic Sea in Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
The town holds his archive.