This is the first in Andrea Camilleri’s series featuring Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The usual trend for fast paced, edgy, gruesome crime novels, is not quite Camilleri’s style, he brings a slower pace to his stories, soaking up the sights and sounds of Sicily and bringing a gentle humour in to the story lines. Saying that this is still an intriguing and brilliant crime thriller and the beginning of a fantastic series with a highly likable leading character.
The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleri's wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano.
When the body of respected and prominent engineer is discovered in the Pasture, a rubbish-strewn site brimming with drug dealers and prostitutes, the coroner's verdict is death from natural causes - refreshingly unusual for Sicily.
But Inspector Salvo Montalbano of the Vigàta police force, 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, despite pressure from Vigàta's police chief, judge, and bishop.
Picking his way through a labyrinth of high-comedy corruption, carefully planted false clues, trigger-happy Mafia members, and delicious Sicilian fare, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter.
The Shape of Water is followed by the second in this bestselling series, The Terracotta Dog.
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.
