Mystery author # 31: Andrea Camilleri

Translator: Stephen Sartarelli
Series detective: Inspector Salvo Montalbano
Type of investigator: Police
Setting & time: Vigàta, Sicily (and neighbourhood), Italy; late 20th century

This time, I read two books by the author. Note that the given year of publication is for the original Italian publication.

Title: The Shape of Water
Original Italian title: La forma dell'acqua
No. in series: 1
Year of publication: 1994
Type of mystery: Death under mysterious circumstances (possibly murder), police procedural

Story: A famous and respected Sicilian political leader is found dead from a heart attack. There is no doubt of the cause of death, but as the circumstances of the finding of the body and the place where it was found are rather suspicious, Inspector Montalbano decides to get to the bottom of it, despite pressure from the authorities to close the case. Was it an accidental death during a sexual encounter with a prostitute, or was the heart attack manufactured, making it a murder?

Rating: A fresh, sneaky and entertaining police procedural. 4 stars.
--

Title: The Voice of the Violin
Original Italian title: La voce del violino
No. in series: 4
Year of publication: 1997
Type of mystery: Murder; police procedural

Story: Inspector Montalbano's curiosity leads him to the body of a young woman who has been murdered during or after sex. Her purse, full of expensive jewellery, is missing, so robbery appears to have been the motive, but the clues show that in all likelihood she knew her murderer. When the case is taken from the local police and handed over to the carabineri who proceed to make things more complicated, Montalbano seizes the opportunity to put one over an obnoxious police commissioner, but he also has to deal with some serious regrets caused by his own mistakes.

Rating: A fine and entertaining murder mystery. 4+ stars.

Author review: I have found a new "must read more" author in Andrea Camilleri. The narrative technique in both books combines humour, skilful writing and great plotting, and Stephen Sartarelli's translations are very good. Montalbano is an instantly likeable character, and the plots are a heady mixture of passion and cold calculation, interspersed with glimpses of Sicilian life and the ways of the Sicilian people. I can't wait to read more. 4 stars.

P.S. For those who are unfamiliar with Italian/Sicilian society, there are explanations of some of the things a reader may stumble over, in the last pages of the book.

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog