Book number ten in this stylish detective series see’s Montalbano trying to have a relaxing holiday in the Sicilian hills with his girlfriend, but soon dead bodies are turning up and Montalbano is up to his neck in grisly goings on.
August Heat by Andrea Camilleri is the tenth installment in the Inspector Montalbano series, now adapted as a major BBC4 television series.
The lazy, slow month of August at the height of the Sicilian summer is, Inspector Montalbano assures his girlfriend Livia as they prepare for a relaxing holiday in a villa he has found for them, far too hot for any murders to be committed. But when Livia's friends' young son goes missing, a chain of events is sparked which will certainly ruin the Chief Inspector's pleasant interlude.
A secret apartment and a grisly find in an old trunk are just the beginning, as Montalbano navigates his way through the case, as well as coping with the sweltering heat, the suspicious death of an Arab labourer and the tempting lure of a beautiful girl . . .
August Heat is followed by the eleventh book in the series, The Wings of the Sphinx.
Andrea Camilleri is one of Italy’s most famous contemporary writers. His Montalbano series has been adapted for Italian television and translated into nine languages. He lives in Rome.
His 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. Both farcical and endearing, Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, with the added culinary idiosyncrasies of an Italian Maigret’ and if you like authors such as Alexander McCall Smith, Donna Leon and Michael Dibdin you really should try some of his novels.
