Review of The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri (Penguin, 2013; Italian 2009)

Inspector Montalbano is just about to head away for a few days holiday with Livia when he witnesses a seagull plummet from the sky, hitting the ground hard.  It staggers to its feet, does a strange dance then drops dead.  Disturbed by the bird’s demise he heads into work to sign some forms before departing on his break.  There he learns that his trusted right-hand man, Fazio, has disappeared having gone to the docks to investigate an allegation of drugs smuggling.  Forgetting his trip, Montalbano starts to hunt for Fazio, fearing the seagull was a portent sign.  As he follows the trail, he is soon drawn into a conspiracy of smuggling, blackmail and murder.
The Dance of the Seagull is the fifteenth book in the Montalbano series.  Whilst Montalbano is a reasonably serious character, the books are light-hearted and witty, as much as about Sicilian life and culture, especially its food, as about solving the crime.  The atmosphere and sense of place are nicely realised.  The characterisation is well observed and some of the dialogue exchanges are wonderful.  As were the internal dialogues between Montalbano 1 and 2, sitting on each of his shoulders.  The plot for the most part worked okay, though the resolution felt a little clunky, as if Camilleri wasn’t quite sure how it was going to end then somehow muddled through.  Moreover, as with the other books, time and space seemed a little elastic -- the investigation takes place at a leisurely pace and everywhere seemed to take a long time to get to and was far away, yet it is meant to be a local police force and Montalbano had an intimate knowledge of the local geography.  Overall, a fairly dark story told through witty and light storytelling. 

Review of The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, published by Picador (2003, in Italian in 1994)

Silvio Luparello, a well connected Sicilian politician, is found dead in his car by two garbage collectors at the Pasture, a narrow strip of brush land between an abandoned chemical plant and a beach, a liminal space of prostitution and drugs. It seems as if Luparello has died in flagrante, but Inspector Salvo Montalbano is not so sure. Tantalisingly out of reach, something is not quite right and despite the pressure of his boss, the local judge and a bishop to close the case he keeps returning to the source of his unease – why would Luparello, known for his discretion, risk everything by visiting the Pasture? And who was in the car with him at the time he died? Slowly, but surely, he starts to form water into shapes, but which one is the truth?

I had a little friend, a peasant boy, who was a little younger than me. I was about ten. One day I saw that my friend had put a bowl, a cup, a teapot and a square milk carton on the edge of a well, had filled them all with water, and was looking at them attentively.

‘ “What are you doing?” I asked him. And he answered me with a question in turn.

‘ “What shape is water?”

‘ “Water doesn’t have a shape!” I said, laughing. “It takes the shape you give it.”’

Camilleri’s writing seems breezy and effortless, sucking the reader into the seedy underbelly of Sicilian high society and the easy going and urbane world of Inspector Montalbano, and I zipped through The Shape of Water in a few hours. Camilleri keeps the pace fairly brisk by minimising the description of scenes and characters to their essences. His characterization and sense of place suffers little however. Often quite humorous, the story is well plotted and from the mid-point on it starts to twist and loop, cleverly tying up different strands and proving Montalbano was right to have doubts. I found The Shape of Water to be a more satisfying read than August Heat (my review here) although the latter book had a more rounded list of supporting police characters.

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Review of August Heat by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli, published by Picador (2009, in Italian in 2006)

I ordered a copy of August Heat after reading a Glenn Harper’s review posted on his International Noir blog and it was with some envy that I read about the Sicilian sun while the rain poured down outside in North West Ireland!

In the scorching heat of an August summer, Inspector Salvo Montalbano arranges for his girlfriend’s friends to stay in a villa that overlooks a secluded beach and the cooling, blue waters of the Mediterranean. When the friend’s young son – ‘a master at breaking the conjones of all creation’ – disappears, Montalbano’s hopes for a quiet summer are dashed. It transpires that what seemed like an idyllic villa has a dark past and a hidden secret and Montalbano is soon investigating the murder of a beautiful young girl and the death of an Arab labourer, jousting with the head of forensics, the prosecutor, the commissioner, and a mafia and politically connected owner of a construction company. When his girlfriend and her friends head back to the mainland, the inspector finds himself falling for the victim’s identical twin sister, a young siren more than thirty years his junior. And all the while the blazing sun makes life hot and uncomfortable.

He locked the door to his room, stripped down to his underpants, threw the papers that were on the armchair on to the floor, pulled this up next to the mini-fan, which he turned in such a way that it blew onto his chest, then sat down, hoping to survive.

It is difficult not to like an inspector that strips to his underwear or swimming trunks at every available opportunity! Easy going, sly, witty, sometimes lethargic, and happy to bend the law for the greater good, Montalbano is the urbane cop with loyal underlings and boorish or priggish equals and superiors. Written with warmth and humour, August Heat slips down easily like a fine wine. It was a great antidote to the rain lashing down outside and certainly made me pine for a bit of sun. Camilleri’s dialogue sparkles in places, his characterizations are sharp, and he manages to keep the story light and frothy and rolling along, especially in the first half of the book. Stephen Sartarelli has done an excellent job of translation, even managing to capture accents and dialect. This might have been a four star review except for the ending. The plotting is well paced, but then speeds up at the end to just stop at the closing climax leaving a couple of loose ends, which I won’t detail to avoid spoilers. After some nice work getting there it did feel like a bit of a let down. Regardless of the ending, I enjoyed August Heat and I’ll keep an eye out for others from earlier in the series many of which I’m told do deserve a four star rating.


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