Andrea Camilleri: A Crime Reader’s Guide to the Classics ‹ CrimeReads

Neil Nyren provides Crimereads and devoted readers with the essential guide to Andrea Camilleri's "Inspector Montalbano" series of books.

“Are you trying to bust my balls?”

The speaker is Inspector Salvo Montalbano, head of the fictional municipality of Vigàta, Sicily’s, police department, and in the 28 novels and two short story collections written by Andrea Camilleri and published in Italian and English…someone always is.

The criminals, from petty to monstrous, who occupy his frustrating days (and sometimes alarming nightmares); the Mafia thugs who spread their tentacles into every Sicilian institution; the corrupt politicians who march hand in hand with them; the witless press that blindly supports whatever government is in charge at the moment; the colleagues who, for all their police skills, can’t help but complicate his life at times; the suspicious Commissioner who seems intent on complicating his life at all times; the lady friend in Genoa with whom he can’t seem to get through a phone conversation without squabbling; the succession of beautiful women he meets during his cases who offer serious temptations and, all too often, deceptions – all these people light his fuse, but do not deter him. 

With a mix of sardonic humor, cynicism, stubbornness, compassion, a nose for crime, and a very personal sense of justice, Montalbano dyspeptically perseveres through all the tragicomedy that imbues his beloved island, reminding us that incidents – and people – are often not what they seem, and that sometimes refusing to obey an order is a virtue, not a sin.

read more here 

@ Crimereads

@ Wikipedia