Inspector Montalbano Mystery
25 primary works • 35 total works
Book 23
The day gets off to a bad start for Montalbano: while trying to break up a fight on Marinella beach, he hits the wrong man and is stopped by the Carabinieri. When he finally gets to the office, the inspector learns about a strange abduction: a woman was abducted, drugged, and then released unharmed only hours later. Within a few days, the same thing happens again. Both women are thirty years old and work in a bank.
Montalbano also has to deal with an arson case. A shop has burned down, and its owner, Marcello Di Carlo, seems to have vanished into thin air. At first this seems like a trivial case, but a third abduction—yet again of a girl who works in a bank—and the discovery of a body bring up new questions.
Book 24
The Other End of the Line is the twenty-fourth Inspector Montalbano mystery from the international bestselling author Andrea Camilleri, and this time migrants and murder are on the Inspector's mind.
In Inspector Montalbano’s coastal town of Vigàta, a surge of migrants have been coming in by boat, and all the town’s hands are on deck to help the arrivals. At the heart of the scene are the police – on the lookout for the people smugglers responsible – and long night-shifts are rendering Inspector Montalbano and his officers exhausted.
Then one night, while Montalbano is enduring yet another gruelling stint at the port, a separate crime is committed – unexplained, unexpected, and unpleasant. Elena, the dressmaker at the town’s famous tailors, has been found dead – slaughtered by her own scissors . . .
As a swell of desperate people arrive in search of a better life, Inspector Montalbano finds himself trying to unravel the mystery of who murdered the dressmaker. But as he makes his enquiries, the Inspector can’t help but wonder: what will happen if he keeps tugging on this thread? And what will he find at the end of the line?
The Other End of the Line is followed by the twenty-fifth gripping mystery, The Safety Net.
Book 25
Set on the coast of Sicily, The Safety Net is the twenty-fifth novel in the bestselling Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.
***Adapted for BBC4's Inspector Montalbano series***
Vigàta is bustling as the new filming location for a Swedish television series set in 1950. In the production frenzy, the director asks the locals to track down movies and vintage photos to faithfully recreate the air of Vigàta at that time. Meanwhile, Montalbano is grappling with a double mystery, one that emerges from the past and another that leads him into the future . . .
Engineer Ernesto Sabatello, rummaging in the attic of his house, finds some films shot by his father between 1958 and 1963, always on the same day, 27th March, and always the same shot: the outside wall of a country house. Montalbano hears the story and, intrigued, begins to investigate its meaning.
Meanwhile, a middle school is threatened by a group of armed men, and a closer look at the case finds Montalbano looking into the students themselves and delving into the world of social media.
Book 26
Mimi Augello is visiting his lover when the woman's husband unexpectedly returns to the apartment; he climbs out the window and into the downstairs apartment, but one danger leads to another. In the dark he sees a body lying on the bed. Shortly after, another body is found, and the victim is Carmelo Catalanotti, a director of bourgeois dramas with a harsh reputation for the acting method he developed for his actors.
Are the two deaths connected? Catalanotti scrupulously kept notes and comments on all the actors he worked with, as well as strange notebooks full of figures and dates and names. Inspector Montalbano finds all of Catalanotti's dossiers and plays, the notes on the characters, and the notes on his last drama, Dangerous Turn--the theater is where he'll find the answer.
Book 27
Giovanni Trincanato has brought ruin to the shipyard he inherited from his father and when a worker he fires hangs himself on the construction site, Inspector Montalbano is called to the scene. In short order, the inspector loses his temper with the crass Giovanni, delivers a slap to his face, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last he sees of Trincanato. Meanwhile, a mysterious schooner called Halcyon shows up in the harbor, seemingly deserted except for just one man. With its presence comes even more mysteries, another death, and the arrival of the FBI. Alongside Sicilian-American Agent Pennisi, Montalbano and his team must attempt a suspenseful infiltration operation in this new, page-turning Inspector Montalbano mystery.
Rounding the Mark is the seventh darkly humorous novel in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series.
Increasingly disillusioned with his government and the world in general, Inspector Montalbano is considering retirement. He is starting to feel his age, and even his favourite restaurant has closed. But when he bumps into a dead body during a bracing swim, his detective instincts are aroused once more. Particularly when the most likely identity of the victim is a man already long buried . . .
Rounding the Mark is followed by the eighth novel in the series The Patience of the Spider.
Other cases include a missing woman who has run away from the love of her life; an old married couple who appear to be rehearsing their suicides; and a crime so dark there's only one person the inspector can call for help.
With twists and turns aplenty, these short stories have all the wit, mystery and culinary gusto that Camilleri's fans have come to love him for.
The Scent of the Night is the sixth comic detective novel in the Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.
Montalbano learned how hard it was to put on a wetsuit while in a dinghy speeding over a sea that wasn't exactly calm. Mimì, at the helm, looked tense and worried.
"Getting seasick?" the inspector asked him at one point.
"No. Just sick of myself."
"Why?"
"Because every now and then I realize what a stupid shit I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas."
When an angry octogenarian holds a terrified and lovelorn secretary at gunpoint, Inspector Montalbano is reluctantly drawn into the case. The secretary's boss, a financial advisor, has vanished along with several billion lire entrusted to him by the good citizens of Vigàta. Also missing is the advisor's young colleague, whose uncle just happens to be building a house on the site of Inspector Montalbano's very favourite olive tree . . .
Ably abetted by his loyal and eccentric team, Montalbano, the food-loving, commitment-phobic inspector, returns for another delicious investigation served up in vintage Camilleri style.
The Scent of the Night is followed by the seventh book in the series, Rounding the Mark.
'A brother,' he said.
Jesus Christ! Now where'd this brother come from? Whose brother? Montalbano had known from the start that between all the brothers, uncles, in-laws, nephews and nieces, this case was going to drive him crazy.
Chief Inspector Montalbano is on enforced sick leave. He is being vigorously looked after by his spirited girlfriend Livia, which unfortunately means his housekeeper - an excellent cook - has retreated in a fit of pique.
Then when a local girl goes mysteriously missing, the whole community takes an interest in the case. But why are the kidnappers so sure that the girl's impoverished father and dying mother will be able to find a fortune? The ever-inquisitive Montalbano steps in, to get to the heart of the matter in his own inimitable style.
For a brief moment, as Montalbano was looking, a bright blade of light flashed from the loft and shone straight in his eyes. Despite the sunglasses, he instinctively shut his eyes and when he reopened them the light was gone . . .
When a gentleman arrives at Montalbano's station to report an armed robbery on his wife that ended with a kiss, the inspector's suspicions are aroused.
As he delves deeper into the case, Montalbano finds that none of the witnesses' stories are adding up, and he can't help but feel that they're not meant to. When a body turns up showing all the signs of a mafia hit, the inspector knows he must excavate the truth from what he is being led to believe.
Meanwhile there's a case that keeps winding its way back to Montalbano's office. A locked door has suddenly appeared on a farmer's disused shed, and then, just as quickly, the door disappears. The anti-terrorist police soon intervene, but why are they so keen to keep this away from the inspector? And why does he sense that this case is connected to him somehow?
With deceit at every turn and a distraction of the heart taking over his head, Inspector Montalbano must focus if he is ever going to solve this mystery.
Set in Sicily, The Terracotta Dog is the second novel in the humorous Inspector Montalbano series by Andrea Camilleri.
*Adapted for BBC4's Inspector Montalbano series*
After a cloak and dagger exchange with an ageing Mafioso, Inspector Montalbano is left haunted by the man’s dying words, which lead him to a mountainside just west of Vigàta where he unearths two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-size terracotta dog.
Heedless of personal danger, Montalbano’s drive to solve this old crime forces him on a journey through Sicily’s World War II history and to the dark heart of one family . . .
The Terracotta Dog is followed by the third title in this satirical series, The Snack Thief.
A collection of eight ingenious short stories following Inspector Montalbano’s investigations into Sicily’s murky underworld, all served with Camilleri’s trademark wit, and Montalbano’s typical appetite.
Featuring stories adapted for BBC4’s Inspector Montalbano, this is the perfect place to start reading Sicily’s favourite crime author.
From the title story, Death at Sea, in which the alleged manslaughter of an engineer upon a fishing trawler leads Inspector Montalbano to uncover an even more sinister crime, Andrea Camilleri takes his readers through eight cunning cases from the Vigàtan police files. Starting with an arson attack on a hotel which leaves the distraught owner as the chief suspect; to the mysterious case of a woman who goes missing in an underpass with a million lire in her handbag; to a threat on Montalbano’s own life, as an anonymous motorcyclist takes a shot at the detective.
“You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven’t read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen. Aglow with local color, packed with flint-dry wit, as fresh and clean as Mediterranean seafood — altogether transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano.” A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
American readers were first introduced to Sicily’s inimitable Inspector Salvo Montalbano more than ten years ago. Since then, the detective—and his characteristic mix of humor, cynicism, compassion, and love of good food—has won the affection of crime fiction aficionados and Italophiles alike. With Andrea Camilleri’s last two mysteries appearing on the New York Times bestseller list, it’s clear that interest in the series is at an all time high. Now, Death in Sicily features the Inspector’s first three adventures in one handy volume, offering new readers just the enticement they need to get started.
