Mimi Augello is visiting his lover when the woman's husband unexpectedly returns to the apartment. Hurriedly, he climbs out the window and into the downstairs apartment, but from one danger to another. In the dark he sees a body lying on the bed.
Shortly afterwards another body...Read more
It's been raining for days in Vigàta, and the persistent downpours have led to violent floods overtaking the Inspector's beloved hometown, sweeping across the land and leaving only a sea of mud behind. It is on one of these endless grey days that a man - a Mr Giuglù Nicotra - is found dead...Read more
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...Read more
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...Read more
‘Contrary to what you think, I’m carrying out this investigation as best I can. But let’s do this: if I get stuck, if I find I can’t go forward or back, then I’ll let you know, and you can step in. And offer me a way out. You’ve gained a bit of detective work through me, haven’t you? What...Read more
When Montalbano comes to the aid of his new neighbour, Liliana Lombardo, after the engine of her car is interfered with, the inspector can little imagine where this innocuous event will lead. It soon transpires that the young woman - beautiful, intelligent and rather vague about the...Read more
Two deaths, the suicide a newly laid-off worker and an unscrupulous businessman found murdered, leads Inspector Montalbano to inspect the Halcyon, a nearly abandoned mysterious ship with no passengers.Read more
When Viagata is wracked by storms, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is called to attend the discovery of a dismembered body in a field of clay. It looks like the work of the notorious local mafia. But who is the victim? Why was the body divided into 30 pieces? And what is the significance of the...Read more
It occurred to him that he might not have had anything to do with Strangio's death. It was a voice in the night, an anonymous voice, that had told him this. A voice in the night that could easily have been the voice of his conscience.
Feeling his age, as his birthday...Read more
A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari – two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at...Read more
Montalbano opened the door to step out. But Gallo held him back, putting one hand on his arm. ‘What’s in there, Chief?’ ‘If it’s what I think, it’s something so horrific that it’ll haunt your dreams for the rest of your life . . .’ When a crazed elderly man and his sister begin firing...Read more
When a gentleman arrives at Montalbano's police 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...Read more
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...Read more
Inspector Montalbano enjoys simple pleasures: delicious food, walks along the water, the occasional smoke yet these are just the backdrop to his duties as a detective. His latest case is the killing of the wealthy Cosimo Barletta. Thought to be a widower living out a quiet life by the sea,...Read more
After a hectic morning involving two rather irritating cases of mistaken identity, Inspector Montalbano finally arrives in his office ready to find out what’s troubling Vigàta this week. What he discovers is unnerving. A woman on her way home from work has been held up at gunpoint,...Read more
With their dark sophistication and dry humor, Andrea Camilleri's hugely popular Sicilian crime novels continue to win more and more fans in America. The day after a storm, Inspector Montalbano encounters a strange woman who expresses interest in a certain yacht scheduled to dock that...Read more
A rash of burglaries has got Inspector Salvo Montalbano stumped. The criminals are so brazen that their leader, the anonymous Mr. Z, starts sending the Sicilian inspector menacing letters. Among those burgled is the young and beautiful Angelica Cosulich, who reminds the inspector of the...Read more
Inspector Montalbano rises one morning to find the carcass of a horse on the beach in front of his seaside home. But no sooner do his men arrive, than the body has mysteriously vanished, leaving behind only a trail in the sand ...Before long Rachele, a beguiling equestrian champion, turns...Read more
Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship with Livia is once again on the rocks and-acutely aware of his age-he is beginning to grow weary of the endless violence he encounters. Then a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off and only a tattoo of a...Read more
When a colleague extends his summer vacation, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is forced to stay in Vigata and endure the August heat. Montalbano's long-suffering girlfriend, Livia, joins him with a friend husband and young son in tow to keep her company during these dog days of summer. But when...Read more
With their dark sophistication and dry humor, Andrea Camilleri's classic crime novels continue to win more and more fans in America. The latest installment of the popular mystery series finds the moody Inspector Montalbano further beset by the existential questions that have been plaguing...Read more
The number of Inspector Montalbano fans will continue to grow with this ingenious new novel featuring the earthy and urbane Sicilian detective. Half the retirees in Vigáta have invested their savings with a financial wizard who has disappeared, along with their money. As Montalbano...Read more
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...Read more
Set once again in Sicily, The Patience of the Spider pits Inspector Montalbano against his greatest foe yet: the weight of his own years. Still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in Rounding the Mark, he must overcome self-imposed seclusion and waxing self-doubt...Read more
The Sicilian detective, Inspector Salvo Montalbano, is on the search for the killer of a young woman. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer (now disappeared) and her lover - an antiques dealer from Bologna. However, it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist...Read more
The fifth in the hit Italian crime series by Andrea Camilleri, Excursion to Tindari is a darkly comic detective story featuring Inspector Montalbano.Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple's disappearance . . . A...Read more
Never has Inspector Montalbano's character – a unique blend of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food - been more compelling than in Andrea Camilleri's third Montalbano novel, The Snack Thief.
When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a...Read more
The Terra-Cotta Dog opens with a mysterious tete-a-tete with a mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and some dying words that lead inspector Montalbano to a secret grotto in a mountainous cave where two young lovers, dead fifty years and still...Read more
The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleri's wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano.
The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort...Read more
I turn to these books partly for the plot, but mostly for the unapologetically grumpy Montalbano, the food porn, the supporting characters and the locations.
In terms of plot, A NEST OF VIPERS undoubtedly isn't the strongest Montalbano book in the series. There was nothing...Read more