The delightfully criminal Sicily of Andrea Camilleri
Around Christmas every year, I trawl through The Guardian and NYT best books of the year lists. Then, there's a visit to the bookshop and a supplementary Amazon order.
The Guardian's 2021 list of best crime books included a review of Riccardino, by the late Italian author Andrea Camilleri, who I hadn't heard of before. This was the final, posthumously published book of his Inspector Montalbano series, running into over two dozen books. Intrigued by the review and a couple of articles about the author, I went back to the beginning of the series.
What a joy.
Since January, I've read three, including the first two, The Shape of Water and The Terracotta Dog, and obtained another five, to be enjoyed over the course of the year, as a little gift to myself after I complete a more serious tome.
The ingredients of these thrillers include the Mafia (always in the background, never glorified), the provincial and occasionally bumbling police force, the clergy, North African immigrants, corrupt local bureaucrats and politicians and his girlfriend Livia, who visits from Genoa, all wrapped around Montalbano and his fictional town of Vitaga.
Montalbano is disarmingly brilliant, but faintly ridiculous and ageing, perhaps echoing the fact that Camilleri started writing the series when he was almost 70.
The plots are complex and twisting and the stories move quickly, while life in the corner of Sicily that provides the setting for them moves charmingly slowly. The crimes themselves can be serious but Camilleri's style, while at times humorously dark, does not impose on the reader with any gritty realism.
Food is a key part of these books, so savour Camilleri's lucid prose, just as Montalbano savours the delicious Sicilian meals prepared by his housekeeper Adelina or at one of his local restaurants.