Inspector Montalbano [5]
Andrea Camilleri
Penguin USA, Inc. (2001)
Rating:
****
Tags:
Mystery, Andrea Camilleri, Thriller
Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple's disappearance. They'd 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 Vigata 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
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Praise for Andrea Camilleri and the Montalbano series
“Montalbano is a delightful creation, an honest man on Sicily’s mean streets.”
“This savagely funny police procedural ... prove[s] that sardonic laughter is a sound that translates ever so smoothly into English.”
“Wit and delicacy and the fast-cut timing of farce play across the surface ... but what keeps it from frothing into mere intellectual charm is the persistent, often sexually bemused Montalbano, moving with ease along zigzags created for him, teasing out threads of discrepancy that unravel the whole.”
“Hailing from the land of Umberto Eco and La Cosa Nos- tra, Montalbano can discuss a pointy-headed book like
—
“Subtle, sardonic, and