The novel 'Un giorno perfetto' (A Perfect Day, 2005), which was adapted for the cinema by Ferzan Özpetek in 2008, is Melania G. Mazzucco's only novel to date to foray into the terrain of crime fiction.The frenetic pacing, the penchant for the ordinary and quotidian, and the fetishizing of weapons all work to create expectations that the narrative does not manage to bring to fruition. From the opening prolepsis, the novel's events diminish in significance and make way for a social reading in which gender violence is situated on a backdrop of a variety of social and familial difficulties as experienced by the characters. These are inserted into the urban geography of Italy's capital city. Beneath an apparently simple writing style is hidden the capacity to multiply motives and nuances to create a polyphonic novel in which even the soundtrack of songs of the time period acquire a structural function. Keywords: Melania G. Mazzucco; textual interpretation; contemporary italian narrative; crime novel.