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 afternoon. Not long after she’s gone, the yacht’s crew reports finding a disfigured corpse. Also at anchor is a luxury vessel with a somewhat shady crew. Both boats will have to stay in Vigàta until the investigation is over and, based on information from the woman, Montalbano begins to think the occupants of the yacht might know more about the man’s death than they’re letting on.
About Andrea Camilleri
Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano mystery series, bestsellers in Italy and Germany, has been adapted for Italian television and translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Dutch, and Swedish. He lives in Rome.
Editorial Review
When rain forces traffic to a near-standstill, Sicilian Inspector Montalbano, on his drive to work, rescues a young woman whose car is about to be flooded. Identifying herself as Vanna, she professes concern over her wealthy aunt’s yacht of the same name. When Montalbano humors her by checking, he finds a naked corpse in the yacht’s dinghy, his face bashed in to hinder identification. As for the mysterious Vanna, seems she isn’t who she claimed to be. The case proves to be so head-spinning that Montalbano writes himself a letter laying out facts and suppositions and excoriating himself for his slow progress. Relief comes in the person of Lt. Laura Belladonna, a local officer much more astute than his usual sidekicks Fazio and Mimì. But working in close contact with Laura brings up deep feelings Montalbano hadn’t bargained for. – Kirkus Reviews
Buried in the Sand - Andrea Camilleri’s ‘The Age of Doubt’
The New York Times Book Review – June 1, 2012 (Excerpt)
Inspector Salvo Montalbano, the life force of Andrea Camilleri’s droll police procedurals set on the southern coast of Sicily, lives so close to the sea that a bad storm can send waves under his front porch and a really bad storm can wash out the road into town. When that happens in THE AGE OF DOUBT (Penguin, paper, $15),the chivalrous detective comes to the rescue of a young woman who has driven in from Palermo to meet her aunt’s yacht, the Vanna. But when the Vanna makes harbor, she’s towing a dinghy with a body in it, and when Montalbano questions the imperious grande dame who owns the yacht (in the breezy idiom of the translator, Stephen Sartarelli), he discovers that she doesn’t have a niece.
Camilleri has his fun with the rich visitors who sail their huge pleasure craft into local waters but won’t dirty their Top-Siders by treading on local soil. But the more subtle and sustained humor in this series has to do with the sardonic attitude the Sicilians take toward strangers who view them as happy peasants, incapable of understanding their more worldly (and often criminal) pursuits. While Montalbano is smarter than the jaded villains give him credit for, he’s easily distracted by a fine meal, a beautiful woman, an interesting dream — or just the sight of the sea. [Read the full article...]
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THE BLEEDING HILLS
A Novel by Wilfried F. Voss
I have fought a good fight,
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The Irish War is officially a part of history, but not for Finnean Whelan, an IRA veteran of almost 40 years. British Intelligence has produced evidence that he is the mastermind behind a conspiracy to assassinate the First Minister of Northern Ireland. For Whelan this is not only a mission of revenge, but marks the beginning of a journey into the past and the return to the one true love: Ireland. [More...]
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