Fiction and True Crime, a Career in Writing

If she had been able to choose freely, she would have opted for archaeology or some other classical path, certainly not economics. "In my day,” says 54-year-old Elisabetta Cametti, “the final decision was up to the parents and so I enrolled in Bocconi, choosing Business Administration." However, her true passion was and still is writing: "At Bocconi I specialized in marketing and I experienced it as the most dynamic part of the Bocconi curriculum. Those were the first steps of a path oriented towards creativity, which took me to De Agostini, where I held various positions until becoming General Manager Italy of the Collectibles Division, and where I led teams devoted to the creation of innovative editorial products." Elisabetta Cametti remained at De Agostini until 2010, then founded her own company with the mission of providing publishing consulting and creating content properties for TV and toys. Then came a collaboration with Eaglemoss, an international publishing giant based in London. It was a managerial career, “that I would not have been able to do without my studies at Bocconi.”

In 2014 she published her first thriller, K - I guardiani della storia, which was a success. And from there everything took off. A decade after her literary debut, she has 14 books under her belt. Last year she had a new challenge: “In 2024 I published my first true crime book: I dettagli del male.” It was a natural turning point, she says. “Since I have been investigating crime stories on TV for 11 years, I owe my beginnings to ‘Mattino 5’, where I was invited to present one of my novels and express my opinion on a double murder shrouded in mystery. Since then, the world of television has become an important part of my daily life.” Today Elisabetta is a regular guest not only on ‘Mattino 5’ on Canale 5, but also on ‘La Vita in diretta’ and ‘Porta a Porta’ on Rai 1. It is nearly a full-time job, which led to her first non-fiction work: “In the book, I dettagli del male (The Details of Evil), I tackle four crime cases. It was challenging to write about them. Not only because I had to study thousands of pages of investigation files and trial documents, autopsies and psychiatric reports. It was complicated on an emotional level, because for years I wrote novels inspired by reality, and now I decided to tell reality as it is. Without veils, without making excuses for anyone. Above all, without being able to propose happy endings, a light at the end of the tunnel. The book is a descent into real-world horror, which I tried to temper by giving voice to feelings and emotions.” 

This is an important message that Elisabetta wants to convey with her book: “Writing in the true crime genre means exploring into the darkest folds of the criminal mind. Realizing that evil is everywhere, even here and now. There is no room for fiction, also because reality always surpasses it. I chose to tell four cases of crimes perpetrated within Italian families, focusing on the victims, their ways of being, the plans that made them happy, the dreams they harbored. These are stories that must not be forgotten. But also stories from which we must learn to pick up the alarm signals, not to let our guard down. Stories that teach us to be afraid, because fear is often the only weapon at our disposal to prevent being victims.” Elisabetta will return to write thrillers, but is not abandoning true crime: the two paths will continue in parallel, as she now feels the urgency to follow them both. And here we return to the issue of the passion that enabled her to undertake a path that she decided should not remain a child's dream. This, ultimately, is the message for the young generations Changed by Women aims to inspire: “Passions must always be listened to and heeded,” suggests Elisabetta Cametti, “and it is essential to do so with determination. I am convinced that each of us has their own mission, but to discover and achieve it, we need to learn how to indulge our inner voice. The one that does not let itself be influenced by what we should be according to the world around us, because it lives on in our dreams.”