The Sicilian Method

August 3, 2020
At the start of the late bestseller Camilieri’s enjoyable 26th mystery featuring Sicily’s Insp. Salvo Montalbano (after The Safety Net), Montalbano’s colleague Mimi Augello calls on the inspector early one morning to report that he discovered a dead man in a darkened apartment while fleeing an interrupted tryst with a married lover. When Mimi returns to the apartment with Montalbano in tow, the body is gone. Meanwhile, someone fatally stabs prickly theater director Carmelo Catalanotti, who was also a loan shark. As Montalbano investigates both cases, he begins an affair with the new chief of forensics, Antonia Nicoletti, which consumes him to the point that his longtime, long-distance girlfriend, Livia, breaks up with him. In an intriguing twist, Montalbano finds clues to the crimes in Catalanotti’s detailed dossiers on his borrowers and actors, who harbored hard feelings about casting Dangerous Corner, a labyrinthine English play of violence and betrayal. The blend of farce, sexual shenanigans, and strangely intense community theater intrigues as it amuses. Though Camilieri died in 2019, fans can hope that there’s at least one more adventure to come for his aging, cynical police inspector. Agent: Carmen Prestia, Alferjeprestia (Italy).

August 1, 2020
A thespian is stabbed in the heart. Was the killer sending a message? Curmudgeonly Inspector Montalbano is awakened in the middle of the night by Detective Mim� Augello, in great distress because his tryst with beautiful Genoveffa Recchia was ruined by the surprise return of her husband, Martino. Escaping onto the balcony, Mim� lowered himself to the apartment below and sneaked into the bedroom, where he discovered a corpse. Montalbano scolds Mim� for hastily leaving the scene. The dead man, Carmelo Catalanotti, seemed, according to his talkative cleaning lady, to have no job and many lady friends. He was likely stabbed elsewhere and moved to his blood-free apartment. Montalbano, Mim�, and Fazio, another veteran detective, begin by questioning all the residents and employees in the building. One shares his belief that the man was a drug dealer. Several folders that document activity surrounding money, maybe as a loan shark, raise many questions and offer few answers. An emotional visit to the police from Rosario Lo Savio that tearfully recounts a final meeting with his friend Carmelo, a key member of an "important" theater company, introduces a crazy cast of high-maintenance suspects. Montalbano's awkwardness with the opposite sex is on full comic display in his flirtation with the mysterious Antonia, complicated further by his temperamental longtime love, Livia. Unraveling the case of young Nico Dilicata, who reports being shot in the leg, leads Montalbano in a surprising direction. The late Camilleri's antepenultimate novel again combines divinely deadpan drollery with a clever puzzle.

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Starred review from August 1, 2020
When Camilleri died in 2019, he left behind nearly 30 titles featuring his Sicilian detective, Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The books sold more than 30 million copies around the world and became a delightful television program, which is viewed globally. There were several other Montalbano titles awaiting publication when he died; two have already appeared, with this one and another, Riccardino, promising to wrap up the series. This time the reader is once again happily transported to Vig�ta, Sicily, where Montalbano is coping, one delicious meal at a time, with two murders. The arrival of forensics expert Antonia Nicoletti sets him off on a wild roller-coaster ride as his infatuation with her grows, while he dodges calls from his longtime lover, Livia. Fans will laugh out loud as he frantically sets about remaking himself (too bad the cast of Queer Eye wasn't on hand to help). One of the murder victims is a theater director and sometime loan shark with a nasty reputation for the acting method he developed for his cast, designed to build what he called similveracity. Pi� bizzarro! Montalbano finds the key to the solution in his notes for Dangerous Turn, the play that was being staged by the theater director when he was killed. Fans will miss Montalbano mightily.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)