188-89 Vittorio Emanuele III ... Umberto I ... “Gentleman King”: Three kings of Italy. The “Gentleman King” (il re galantuomo) was Vittorio Emanuele II. All the Italian kings since the foundation of the modern monarchy have been of the House of Savoy.
189 “verba volant” and “scripta manent”: “The spoken word flies” and “the written word remains” (Latin).
190 “It’s Ciampi”: Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, still the Italian president of the Republic, a largely ceremonial position. Executive power is invested in the office of the presidente del Consiglio, or prime minister.
192 “a hundred million”: About fifty thousand dollars.
212 Caponata: A zesty traditional southern-Italian dish, often served as an appetizer or side dish, made up of sauteed eggplant, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives, vinegar, olive oil, and anchovies. In this instance, Montalbano eats a large helping of caponata as his main course.
225 “she left her stable and hide”: In Italian, an insignificant inheritance is sometimes described idiomatically as una stalla e una salma, or “a stable and a corpse.” In Sicilian, however, the term salma is also an ancient and sometimes modern unit of surface measurement, equivalent to 1.76 hectares, or about four and a half acres. As a Sicilian, Montalbano seems to be unaware of the Italian expression, since in this conversation he momentarily takes the term salma (rendered as “hide”) literally; he is also unaware of the rather obscure Sicilian unit of measure. A hide was a unit of measurement in medieval England of varying size, starting around sixty acres. Translating salma as hide, while increasing the area some fifteen times, does, however, make it possible to reproduce the protagonist’s incomprehension in this situation, as it rather fortuitously and symmetrically preserves the original term’s double meaning of “corpse” and “land area.” What is inevitably lost is Camilleri’s rather sly literalization of an idiomatic metaphor.
279 prepared for the year 2000: This book was written in 1999 and first published in 2000.
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli
FOR MORE MONTALBANO NOVELS, LOOK FOR THE 
The Shape of Water
The first book in Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series, The Shape of Water is sly, witty, and engaging. Early one morning, Silvio Lupanello, a big shot in the village of Vigata, is found dead in his car in a scandalous set of circumstances. Enter Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Camilleri’s cynical, humorous, shrewd, and unyielding detective who goes head to head with the most powerful and corrupt figures in Vigata to solve the murder.
ISBN 0-14-200239-9
The Terra-Cotta Dog
Second in the Montalbano series, The Terra-Cotta Dog opens with the tenacious Inspector’s mysterious tete-a-tete with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, in a secret grotto, he finds a harrowing scene: two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-size terra-cotta dog. Montalbano’s passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island’s past and into a family’s dark heart amid the horrors of World War II bombardment. ISBN 0-14- 200263-1
The Snack Tkief
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 Sicily’s coast, only Montalbano, with his keen insight into human nature, suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished housecleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son is caught stealing other schoolchildren’s midmorning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief’s life—as well as Montalbano‘s—is on the line. The third in the series, The Snack Thief is full of Humor, cynicism, compassion, and earthiness. ISBN 0-14-200349-2
Voice of the Violin
Montalbano’s gruesome discovery of a lovely, 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 the murder.
ISBN 0-14-200445-6
