10 posts tagged “italy”
Translator: Stephen Sartarelli. If there is one thing that AUGUST HEAT, the tenth in the Inspector Montalbano series, does without a doubt, it is to make the reader feel the titular heat. The sweat and power of the sun is a constant presence, dominating the investigation and forming an oppressive, ubiquitous miasma: "Sitting on the veranda at Marinella, he thought he felt a hint of cool, but it was mostly a hypothesis of cool since neither the sea nor the air was moving."
Montalbano's girlfriend, Livia, is coming to stay for the summer season, but because of her extensive experience of being ignored by her paramour while he is called away on urgent police business, she commands him to find a holiday let for her friend Laura, together with Laura's husband Guido and their young, hyperactive son Bruno, so she will have things to do instead of being bored and alone. Montalbano attends to his task with his customary vigour, eventually lighting on an isolated but suitable villa by the sea, long abandoned by the German couple who own it as a result of various tragedies in their family. One senses that these tragedies were not entirely coincidental and are a harbinger of future complications, but more oblivious than the reader, Montalbano goes ahead and rents the villa on behalf of Livia's friends, who duly move in. Disaster constantly strikes, manifested by invasions of cockroaches, mice and then spiders - however, these are nothing compared with the terrifying disappearance of young Bruno and the family cat, together with a sinister discovery made by Montalbano while he searches for the lost boy.
Realising that the visitors' presence will needlessly complicate his investigations, Montalbano manipulates events so that they, including Livia, leave for home, clearing the way for him to interrogate a series of shady Sicilian builders, property speculators, and estate agents, uncovering all manner of dodgy practices. Despite the blistering heat, Montalbano and his regular band of assistants pursue their course with their usual zeal. Although I followed the plot with my usual enjoyment of Camilleri's novels, the typically offhand style is occasionally just too perfunctory. The central event took place some years ago, and most of the action once Livia and co have left consists of various shady suspects being summoned to the police station and investigated in an attempt to trip them up.
Montalbano is ever susceptible to female charms but, in loyalty to Livia (who has proved a useful excuse for escape on previous occasions) has never succumbed. However, in this story, he meets his match, which perhaps sets things up for some movement in his rather static relationship with Livia in future books.
Eventually, "The light breeze on the veranda had matured from infancy to adolescence and was making itself felt. He decided to seize this favourable moment when his thoughts weren't log-jammed by the heat, and consider rationally the investigation he had on his hands." The metaphor continues, and Montalbano, mainly by pursuing a few avenues that he'd omitted earlier, closes in on his man. Nevertheless, the denouement is engineered by someone else, rendering him a mere spectator, and a frustrated one to boot.
AUGUST HEAT is not the strongest of this charming series of books, though the superb translation and sheer good humour raises many a smile, not least in the passage of homage to Maj Sjowell and Per Wahloo, the Swedish writers of the ten-book Martin Beck series. If you have read the previous books by Camilleri, you'll enjoy this one regardless, but if you haven't, the story may seem somewhat flat and the finer points will be lost. As usual, the translation is utterly sympathetic and a work of art in its own right. The final footnote by the translator is well worth reading, in describing Camilleri's efforts to support the victims of Mafia violence.
Salvo’s search of the missing man’s house soon reveals Angelo’s dead body, in a provocative scene that can leave no doubt that the death is not accidental. After his initial discovery of the body, Salvo’s investigation develops into a satisfying detective story in the Sherlock Holmes tradition, with the complex interplay of the Italian political culture and Sicilian organized crime providing an edgy, sharp focus. “Mimi” Augello, Salvo’s handsome but vain second-in-command, is the acceptable face of policing so far as Salvo’s political superiors are concerned, and is increasingly tied up with large-scale drugs and smuggling investigations on their behalf. Mimi’s gradual evolution across the series from wayward playboy to excessively dedicated parent has been amusingly touching; and the way in which Salvo uses Mimi as a front with his superiors in order to carry on unchecked his own eccentric, intuition-fuelled, erratic and emotional investigations is wonderfully wicked. The other two main members of Salvo’s team, the straight-as-an-arrow, loyal Fazio and the hilarious, linguistically challenged Catrarella, are used to good effect in this novel; the relationship between Salvo and Caterella has become more overtly affectionate as Salvo has come to appreciate Catarella’s simple devotion and dedication to whatever task his master sets him. The Paper Moon is the ninth of Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series, translated by the poet Stephen Satarelli with his usual exceptional sympathy and erudition. Those who have read the previous eight titles will know what to expect, and will not be disappointed. To the contrary, The Paper Moon contains few, if any, of the minor weaknesses of some of the previous titles, and combines successfully the elements of a satisfying mystery, a political satire, a celebration of the traditional ways of Sicilian life (and of course food), convincing characters, and an overarching masterly yet delicate authorial touch. I loved this book. I think it is one of the very best Montalbano novels, but would slightly hesitate to recommend it to readers new to this author because a full appreciation depends on relationships and nuances that have been built up over the series. These layerings of emotion and depth do not detract from a lean, sexy, upfront and delightfully devious plot. Unconstrained by the presence of Livia, his girlfriend -- merely a telephonic presence in this book -- Salvo follows his own path, interrogating a series of beautiful, uninhibited and fabulous women – all strong, independent and headstrong, as the mystery of Angelo’s death seems to become more complex. In the end, Salvo’s intuition and sheer persistence lays bare the damage done by people who are governed by their elemental emotions – a denoument reflecting the modern tragedy of a beautiful country betrayed by those who run it.
Donna Leon is back on top form in her latest Commissario Brunetti novel set in Venice, THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS. The main appeal, for me, is the beautiful sense of place and way of life that unfolds in leisurely style. In the first hundred pages of this short book, the only plot event is when Antonin Scallon, a priest and schoolboy friend of Brunetti's brother (but emphatically not of Brunetti himself) asks Brunetti to look into a case of Leonardi Mutti, leader of a cult who, thinks Scallon, is fleecing people of their money. Brunetti's reaction to the request is strongly coloured by the fact that he disliked the priest when they were schoolmates, but he reluctantly interviews an old, retired priest with whom Scallon is living, and persuades his wife Paola, together with Captain Vianello and his wife, to attend a fundraiser hosted by Mutti.
By page 100 the book's easy rhythm has drawn the reader into Brunetti's world as he goes about his daily business. But the routine is rudely interrupted by the awful discovery of a body in the canal: after Brunetti and Vianello retrieve it, in a clammy scene, the corpse horrifically turns out to be that of a girl who seems to be about 12 years old. Further gruesome facts emerge as the body is examined by the pathologist. Brunetti, who has been reading the Greek dramatists, is deeply affected by the discovery: "He could not bring himself, not that night, to read of the death of Astyanax. He closed his eyes, and the greater darkness brought him the memory of the dead child, the feel of the silk threads of her hair around his wrist." Brunetti applies his detective skills to the case, using his knowledge of the city and the currents of its canals to identify the likely site of the death, and discovering that the girl was a gypsy, or as he is told to call her, a Rom, from one of the immigrant communities living in a camp site over the causeway on the industrial wastes of the Italian mainland.
During the ensuing investigation, Brunetti collaborates with the local police and the social services as well as following up his own leads, all subjects for the author to provide her ironic perspectives on the moral values among the richest and the poorest families in society, as well as her wider observations. At home, for example, Brunetti's teenaged daughter comments that at school her teachers tell her that the Mafia is being fought in a war by the police and the government, to which Paola, Brunetti's wife, replies: "Can you name a war that has been going on for sixty years? In Europe? We've had it ever since the real war ended and the Americans brought the Mafia back to help fight the menace….of international Communism. So, instead of having the risk that the Communists might have entered the government after the war, we've got the Mafia, and we'll have them round our necks for ever." Or, when Paola's mother tells Brunetti her husband's views after a trip to Sicily and Calabria: "Since both places belong to the Mafia and the government has no effective control over them, he thinks it's linguistically correct to refer to them as the Occupied Territories."
But THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS is far from being a political tract. It is a book that shows enormous empathy with the human condition via Brunetti's interviews with various witnesses, suspects and the family of the dead girl, all infused with a kind of accepting disgust at the inevitable differences of life as experienced by the rich and the poor. Brunetti and his colleagues mourn the dead girl and do the right thing by her; and in the process, Brunetti comes to understand Scallon, developing a very different view of him to that which he rather arrogantly held at the outset.
The case under investigation by Inspector Salvo Montalbano in his sixth outing, THE SCENT OF THE NIGHT, is that of a financial advisor who has disappeared with vast quantities of everyone's money. Tempers are characteristically running high, so at the outset Montalbano has to exercise his trademark combination of psychological insight with impulsive action to avert a nasty hostage situation. Even so, the police are left with several puzzling facts about the disappearance, and are struggling to make any headway.
In previous books, we've seen the commissioner, Montalbano's boss, retire and the corporate types move in, all too ready to appear on TV and blame the Mafia for everything, without bothering to look into the facts. After being even more incensed than usual by the new commissioner's insinuations about Montalbano's ethics over the case of the boy Francois (who appears in some of the previous books), Montalbano goes his own way without any reference to his superiors and their theory that the Mafia have killed the financier. The investigation that follows is a lot more satisfying in this book than has been the case in some previous outings, where atmosphere, absorbing though it is, has taken precedence over detection and credibility.
There are some delightful characters along the way: I was particularly fond of Michela, the attractive secretary of the vanished man, mistress of the non verbal communication and sexual blackmail - or is she? She meets her equal in Montalbano in a couple of funny scenes, and the pair end up combining their witty resources to arrive, almost, at an answer. But it isn't until Montalbano realises a connection with Clementine, the old lady who first featured in THE VOICE OF THE VIOLIN, that the complete answer becomes clear. I had worked out the solution a few chapters previously, but it didn't matter, the reader's enjoyment is not impaired by rather too many clues being provided.
The strength of this book is the sense of place: the love that Montalbano has for his environment, his history and his way of life - and in this book, he is even showing signs of maturing in his relationship with long-term but permanently (it seems) absent girlfriend Livia, despite some unfortunate incidents with a sweater. He is enraged by progress, when progress is defined as covering the land with concrete, then abandoning it. There are beautiful little snapshots of this vanishing culture, for example when Montalbano discovers a remote shack where he eats a meal which he won't forget in a hurry. The police in Montalbano's team feature strongly in this outing also: Mimi's wedding traumas; Fazio's understanding and loyalty even when his boss has quite clearly strayed over the line of what is legal; and of course my favourite, the verbally challenged, overenthusiastic Caterella.
The third outing for defence lawyer Guido Guerrieri is, if possible, even better than the previous two. At the start, Guido decides he loves his girlfriend Margherita and wants to have a child with her - though of course he doesn't tell her this, but assumes she'll tell him she's pregnant. Instead, she moves from Bari to New York for a new job. Guido mourns her absence and is sad that she doesn't come home for Christmas, but naturally does not contact her himself, so spends most of the book plagued by introspective worrying, feeling rejected and thinking that the relationship is over.
Guido has a similar attitude to his work. Feeling as if he is not much good as a lawyer, he's actually a lot cleverer than most of the rest of the legal profession who feature, simply by bothering about his job. The vignettes when clients visit his office are delightful, particularly a mother and daughter duo who had me laughing out loud. On the occasions when Guido contacts old friends and acquaintances for advice or help, he comes over not as he sees himself, but as a charming and witty person who they are only too eager to assist, so long as the cost to their own safety is not too great. This is the land of the mafia, after all.
Guido's latest client is Fabio Paolicelli, in prison for admitting to smuggling a large quantity of heroin in his car while returning from holiday in Montenegro. Recognising the name, Guido is convinced that Fabio was part of a Fascist gang who tormented him and other boys when he was young, but his memory is at odds with the sincere prisoner he encounters when they meet in person. A mutual respect develops between the two men as Guido finds out more about how Fabio came to be in the predicament he finds himself to be in.
The situation becomes complicated when Guido meets Fabio's beautiful wife Natsu and their young daughter. Guido's feelings are, predictably, mixed and his loyalties confused. Gradually, Guido pieces together a plausible alternative hypothesis for the crime in order to create reasonable doubts in the prosecution's account; the main joy of the book is the court case, the behaviour of the various witnesses and the reactions of the judges.
A thread running through this story, as in previous books in the series, is Guido's love of books and reading. There are some lovely scenes between him and the local bookseller, and some hints as to a future career in writing. Time will tell.
REASONABLE DOUBTS is an unpretentious, shiningly true book. Despite his own inner doubts, Guido enjoys his simple life of reading, going to the cinema to see old movies, occasional cooking and hanging out in his coastal home town, and the reader can only too well identify with his values. Fabio's story shows that change is possible: even for a youth who starts out as a thug can become a wiser man. Or can he? As you can imagine, Guido doesn't ask him, so we are left with some reasonable doubts about that.
The translation, by Howard Curtis, flows naturally, and I am sure other readers will, like me, be grateful to Bitter Lemon Press and the Arts Council of the UK for publishing this wonderful author in the English Language.
This latest outing for Commissario Guido Brunetti concerns themes of population: immigrants into Western Europe, both adults and babies - and the very different attitudes of society to them. Events unfold when Brunetti is woken in the early hours of the morning to be told of a raid on a Venetian house by the Carabinieri, the Italian military police. During the course of the raid, the householder, a paediatrician, has been injured and the young child of the family has disappeared. As usual, Brunetti has to tread delicately, especially when he observes that his boss, Patta, is involved in some unknown way.
During the course of investigating this messy crime, Brunetti realises that the child was adopted, which leads him and Signorina Elettra, Patta's extraordinary assistant, to some duplicity to investigate the practices of a clinic in Verona. Elettra remains an enigma, however, although the character of Brunetti's colleague Vianello comes into focus - and seems to be more than professionally interested in the multi-talented Elettra.
Vianello has been following his own investigation into what he thinks may be a scam by a group of pharmacists, whereby they claim money for making hospital appointments for non-existent patients. On top of this, Brunetti gets involved in a right-wing political party, using his father-in-law as a way to gain its leader's trust.
All these events give the author plenty of opportunity to provide insightful comments on the Italian, and wider, social and political scene. Although she achieves this goal with her usual dexterity and sharpness of touch (I particularly liked Brunetti's realisation about the pornographic magazines), I felt that this book did not gel as well as some of Leon's previous mini-masterpieces, perhaps because there are too many unconnected elements. I sensed a slightly mechanical treatment of Brunetti's colleagues and the police operations. The Carabinieri aspects were particularly disappointing, and peter out.
As ever, the domestic interludes between Brunetti and Paola, his wife, are a delight. She does not cook in much detail in this book, but I was relieved to discover that one reason she is able to be such a paragon is that she has only four hours teaching commitment a week.
Ultimately, I found the mystery aspect of the book quite weak. There are too many strands of plot, few of which reach a rounded conclusion. Donna Leon's books are always interesting just because of what they convey about the minutiae of life in her chosen setting, but this particular episode is somewhat pale compared to her best.
What more perfect place to read this wonderful outing for Inspector Montalbano than under the Sicilian sun? I could not quite manage that, but reading this book in the hills above Sorrento in southern Italy did not do my mood any harm.
Camilleri follows up his earlier books about the Vigata police with an equally assured and vivid account of two crimes. One is the murder of a young man, and the other concerns the disappearance of an elderly couple while on a trip to the titular historical site of Tindari. The connection is that the young man and the old couple all live in the same apartment building.
Montalbano investigates these crimes with his customary blend of detection and intuition, ably assisted by his wonderfully portrayed team. Each member would not make much of a stab at police work if left to his (they are all male) own devices: one colleague is too susceptible to the female form, another is barely literate apart from when it comes to computers, a third has little imagination. Yet when combined, the team works perfectly to follow up every lead.
EXCURSION TO TINDARI is an utterly convincing slice of Sicilian life: you can smell the sea and the fish; enjoy the wonderful meals in the restaurants; and smile at Motalbano's deft handling of the politics of the higher police echelons as well as of the Mafia. Yet the book is far from whimsical: it is written with great discipline and without any unnecessary prose. It slips down so smoothly that it is finished before you realise it, leaving you both satisfied and slightly melancholy to have finished the book.
The detective aspects of EXCURSION TO TINDARI are a slight stretch. Nene Sanfillipo, the young man who is killed, remains an enigma for slightly too long for the seasoned crime reader. The discovery of certain books and videos should have rung the correct alarm bell a bit quicker. And the excursion to Tindari taken by the old couple turns out to be a bit convoluted – villains are, I imagine, a bit more simple-minded in real life. But never mind, the book is just wonderful for its superb evocation of a way of life, its barbed cynicism about the prevailing political and social culture, and above all its sense of moral values. Events may not always end happily, but the decent thing is done, and that's enough for Montalbano and his trusty colleagues.
Chronologically the fourth outing for Inspector Salvo Montalbano and his Sicilian team of detectives, THE VOICE OF THE VIOLIN is a perfect example of all that is good about this series. The plot is one of the stronger, leaner ones, in which Salvo, through a colleague's bad driving, inadvertently discovers the body of a beautiful woman in a house which she was having built. As Salvo's boss and mentor has now retired, Salvo soon gets caught up in politics and taken off the case. To his annoyance, the flying squad sent to replace him quickly chase down a suspect (previously considered and discounted by Salvo) and kill him in a gun battle.
Or was it a gun battle? His suspicions aroused, and unable to throw off the need to discover who committed the crime, Salvo uses some devious tactics of his own to expose the fraudulent activities of his colleagues and to manoeuvre his superiors to reassign him to the case.
Salvo's gradual uncovering of the true story leading to the crime is logically satisfying, as well as introducing a rewarding set of characters among the witnesses and suspects. The role of the titular violin does not become obvious until later on in the book, but we know that there is going to be some later significance in Salvo's visit to his old friend Clementina. In this visit, she reveals that her upstairs neighbour is a reclusive, retired maestro violinist, who plays her concerts via programmes sent by his housekeeper, of which she shows her appreciation by phoning him afterwards and applauding by the open receiver.
Sure enough, the violin provides the key to the mystery, and Salvo eventually ensures that justice is done, even if it isn't clear how sufficient evidence can be gathered to charge or convict the perpetrator. The only slight false note is the McGuffin that isn't a McGuffin - throughout the book we are reminded that there is a car in the police garage that hasn't been investigated. So obviously so, in fact, that the reader concludes that the car can have nothing to do with the case. But why does the widower, then, keep asking for it, when he has no particular reason to do so? And, at the end, a discovery is made in the car which, if the detectives had only checked at the beginning, makes much of the investigation (and hence the bulk of the book) unnecessary.
Even so, it is a pleasure for its own sake to have the chance to join Salvo and his increasingly close-knit team (earlier rivalries and tensions are gradually being reduced or forgotten) and to experience his boyishly irascible ways. We also see plenty of his "mother's side", as he thinks of it - his sensitivity towards women (not only his girlfriend Livia, who here receives a crushing disappointment, but the murdered woman and her friend, Anna) and, last but by no means least, we can enjoy his visceral appreciation of those wonderful meals prepared by his housekeeper or at one of those trattorias that always seem to be on just the right corner when needed.
On a recent trip to Italy, what better book to take with me for the journey than an instalment of Camilleri's sublime series of Sicilian crime stories? THE SNACK THIEF did not disappoint.
Inspector Salvo Montalbano is a vivid character: irascible with his men, extremely fond of his food, and very good at police work. He knows how to operate in a maze of institutionalised corruption. Owing to an inevitable telephonic misunderstanding with the terminologically confused, if enthusiastic, Catarella, it is Montalbano's handsome deputy Mimi Augello who takes on the case of a Tunisian shot on a local fishing boat. Salvo, for his part, begins to investigate the case of a man who is found stabbed in a lift in a local block of flats one morning (as ever, the scenes of disruption of the local residents' daily lives are pure joy).
True to form, the two cases which at first seem unrelated begin to have more and more in common. Salvo's investigations lead him to a new friend, Clementina, an elderly woman confined to a wheelchair who is a key witness to the convoluted affair confronting Salvo as he slowly unravels the knotted life of Karima, a mysterious cleaning woman who seems central to the case.
The 'Snack Thief' himself turns out to be more significant to Salvo and his girlfriend Livia than either of them had thought could be possible. Does he herald a seismic shift in their comfortable but semi-detached relationship?
As with Camilleri's other books, I loved this outing. Unflinching in its descriptions of life in the raw, yet with a sweet sense of place and yearning for simpler times, the tone is unerring. The plot of THE SNACK THIEF is stronger than that of some of the other books in the series, with Salvo's flashes of inspiration and erratic actions adding up to a satisfying conclusion, tinged with sadness, yet providing hope for the future.
Despite my best intentions, I have managed to read the first few books in this wonderful Sicilian police series in the wrong order. No matter (though the publishers could have helped by noting the order). In THE TERRACOTTA DOG, chronologically the second book, the hilariously linguistically challenged Catarella has been foisted on Salvo Montalbano's team of detectives by his nepotistic connections - although the baby-like, overenthusiastic man himself seems to be entirely innocent of this fact. There is also much rivalry between Salvo and his second in command Mimi Augello, and others in the team are little more than occasional players. In later books, these relationships and characters develop, providing even more depth and joy to a delightful reading paradise.
THE TERRACOTTA DOG begins with an old Mafioso, Tano the Greek (who is no more Greek than Salvo), unable to cope with the impersonal, modern criminal style, wants to retire - yet keep his face. He therefore concocts an elaborate ruse with Salvo, the kind of policeman with whom he knows he can do business, so that it appears as if he has been captured in a heroic gun battle. Things do not go entirely to plan, of course: subsequently Salvo and his men discover a hidden cache of weapons in a cave at an abandoned road construction site - and receive plenty of, in Salvo's view, not entirely properly earned glory in the process.
While all this is going on, Salvo is puzzled by the apparently nonsensical theft of goods from a local supermarket. This event leads him eventually to discover that the cave has a concealed inner chamber. In this secret place are two bodies, the titular terracotta dog, and a bowl of old coins. It is this historical mystery that occupies Salvo for the rest of the book. He becomes obsessed with finding out not only who the bodies are, but how they came to be there, and ignores his other cases even though Mimi's handling of the supermarket affair turns out to be lethal for quite a few civilians.
Although the historical mystery is diverting and the story of the young couple moving, the reason for the strange arrangement in the cave, when Salvo finally understands it, is slightly weak. But getting there is a wonderful journey, not least when Salvo meets the eccentric old academic priest Alcide Maraventano, who engages him in a discourse on reading.
Both Livia (Salvo's long-suffering, mainly absentee girlfriend) and Ingrid (a local woman who became friends with Salvo in THE SHAPE OF WATER) make welcome appearances in this book, and I'm glad to say that even a bullet in the colon does not stop Salvo's enjoyment of the most mouth-wateringly described meals it is possible to describe.
The subtle translation, by Stephen Sartarelli, does the book proud. Does the pun on the word "tenor" really work in Italian? This is just one of the many nuances that make Camilleri's perfect mix of plot, character, unsentimentality, humour and strong sense of local tradition, such a delight for the reader.
