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Titles in This Set

The Shape of Water (Montalbano 1)

The Terracotta Dog (Montalbano 2)

The Snack Thief (Montalbano 3)

The Voice of the Violin (Montalbano 4)

Excursion to Tindari (Montalbano 5)

Description:

The Shape of Water (Montalbano 1)

The goats of Vigata once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendour Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Luparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner’s verdict is death from natural causes – refreshingly unusual for Sicily. But Inspector Salvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing to fools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is not ready to close the case – even though he’s being pressured by Vigata’s police chief, judge, and bishop. Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta firepower, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter.

The Terracotta Dog (Montalbano 2)

The Terracotta Dog opens with a mysterious tte–tte 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 mountain cave where two young lovers dead fifty years and still embracing are watched over by a life-size terracotta dog. Montalbanos passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the islands past and into a familys dark heart amid the horrors of World War II. Andrea Camilleris Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take on Sicilian small-town life and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes. The novels of Andrea Camilleri breath out the sense of place, the sense of humour, and the sense of despair that fill the air of Sicily. To read him is to be taken to that glorious, tortured island Donna Leon Both farcical and endearing, Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandlers Philip Marlowe, with the added culinary idiosyncrasies of an Italian Maigret Guardian

The Snack Thief (Montalbano 3)

Never has Inspector Montalbanos character a unique blend of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food been more compelling than in The Snack Thief. When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicilys coast, only Inspector Montalbano suspects a link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school childrens mid-morning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thiefs life as well as Montalbanos is endangered when the inspector exposes a vipers nest of government corruption and international intrigue.

The Voice of the Violin (Montalbano 4)

The commissioner kept looking at him with an expression that combined contempt and commiseration, apparently discerning unmistakable signs of senile dementia in the inspector. Im going to speak very frankly, Montalbano. I dont have a very high opinion of you. Nor I of you, the inspector replied bluntly. Montalbano’s gruesome discovery of a naked young woman suffocated in her bed immediately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques-dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim’s friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to this murder . . .

Excursion to Tindari (Montalbano 5)

Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couples disappearance. Theyd saved everything . . . there was even a copy of the certificate of living existence, that nadir of bureaucratic imbecility . . . What was the protocol, to use a word dear to government offices? Did one simply write on a sheet of paper something like: I, the undersigned, Salvo Montalbano, hereby declare myself to be in existence, sign it, and turn it in to the appointed clerk? 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 Vigta police headquarters. But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man lived in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily’s brutal New Mafia, which leads him down a path more evil and more far-reaching than any he has been down before. Praise for Andrea Camilleri: A joy to read The Times This savagely funny police procedural proves that sardonic laughter is a sound that translates ever so smoothly into English New York Times