John Nardizzi Books In Order

Publication Order of The Infantino Files Books

Bio submitted by John – thanks so much John!

Telegraph Hill [2014] is the first novel in the Infantino series. The book is inspired by legal cases which John handled win the San Francisco area and around the country. Some early ideas—poems and short sketches—came from walking from Nob Hill through the Tenderloin.

An incredible mix of wealth and poverty in a short space, there was vibrant poetry bubbling up from the streets, in pool halls like Hollywood Billiards, bars like the Driftwood, taco joints, poetry readings at Yackety Yak Cafe.

In the second Infantino novel, The Burden of Innocence [2021], Infantino is hired by the attorney of Sam Langford, a prisoner who has maintained his innocence after being convicted of murder fifteen years ago. As Ray and his protege re-investigate the case, a vicious gangster and a corrupt police officer begin working to derail the investigation. The Burden of Innocence is based on several real innocence cases Nardizzi investigated in New England. There is nothing worse within the criminal justice system than when an innocent person goes to prison.

The impetus of The Burden of Innocence was a disturbing investigation Nardizzi led into a wrongful conviction involving corrupt police in a small Massachusetts town. Part of the backdrop to the case involved stories where officers were actually dealing from a business they were meant to be protecting; then when another officer was investigating the thefts, they accused them of false criminal charges.

But the worst story involved the way certain officers treated female suspects. Certain women were targeted, abused, and then coerced into working as informants in exchange for leniency on their cases. Men abusing power in the workplace have come to a reckoning. The police-witness dynamic shares similarities with a workplace, and can lend itself to abuse.

In The Burden of Innocence, these stories come into the light. Although the action is driven by the private investigators, each person takes a lead role on the stage—the witnesses, the innocent man who suffered years of imprisonment, the people who caused the suffering. Fiction can sometimes tell truth more strongly than nonfiction. They are a way to understand a terrible, dark story, and how people can endure and persevere. And maybe the writer can make things right in fiction that do not get fixed in real life.

Nardizzi has publishing credits in numerous professional and literary journals, including San Diego Writer’s Monthly, Oxygen, Liberty Hill Poetry Review, Lawyers Weekly USA, and PI Magazine. John was awarded the Arc of Justice for the Watson case in 2021 due to his work on cases such as Gary Cifizzari and James Watson, which helped result in their exoneration.

John currently lives near Boston, Massachusetts.