Andrea Camilleri Books In Order

The Shape of Water

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano has become an international sensation whose adventures have been translated from Italian into eight languages, from Dutch to Japanese. The Shape of Water is the first book in this sly, witty, engaging series with its sardonic take on Sicilian life. The goats of Vigata once grazed on the trash strewn, sirocco swept site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavor. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendor Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Lupanello, one of the local movers and shakers apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture. The coroner’s verdict is death from natural causes refreshingly unusual for Sicily. But Inspector Salvo Montalbano, as honest as he is streetwise and as scathing to fools and villains as he is compassionate to their victims, is not ready to close the case even though he’s being pressured by Vigata’s police chief, judge, and bishop. Picking his way nimbly through a labyrinth of high comedy corruption, delicious meals, vendetta fire power, and carefully planted false clues, Montalbano can be relied on, whatever the cost, to get to the heart of the matter. Translated by Stephen Sartarelli.

The Terra-Cotta Dog

Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take on Sicilian life and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes. The Terra cotta Dog opens with the inspector’s mysterious t te t te with a mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, in a secret grotto, he finds a harrowing scene: two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life size terra cotta dog. Montalbano’s passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island’s past and into a family’s dark heart amid the horrors of World War II bombardment. From sly comedy at the expense of his fellow policemen to personal soul searching that helps him enter the minds of those he must investigate, Montalbano is a detective whose earthiness and imagination coalesce into a unique, unfailing appeal. AUTHORBIO: Andrea Camilleri is the author of many books, including his Montalbano series, which has been adapted for Italian television and translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Dutch, and Swedish. Stephen Sartarelli lives in upstate New York.

The Snack Thief

Never has Inspector Montalbano’s character a unique blend of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food been more compelling than in The Snack Thief. When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily’s coast, only Inspector Montalbano, with his keen insight into human nature, suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school children’s mid morning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief’s life as well as Montalbano’s is endangered when the inspector exposes a viper’s nest of government corruption and international intrigue.

Voice of the Violin

The commissioner kept looking at him with an expression that combined contempt and commiseration, apparently discerning unmistakable signs of senile dementia in the inspector. ‘I’m going to speak very frankly, Montalbano. I don’t have a very high opinion of you.’ ‘Nor I of you,’ the inspector replied bluntly. Montalbano’s gruesome discovery of a naked young woman suffocated in her bed immediately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim’s friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to this murder…

Excursion to Tindari

Following the long running success he has enjoyed on bestseller lists in Europe, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is now winning over American readers and critics alike as ‘one of the most engaging protagonists in detective fiction’ USA Today. Now, in Excursion to Tindari, Andrea Camilleri’s savvy and darkly comic take on Sicilian life leads Montalbano into his most bone chilling case yet. In two seemingly unrelated crimes, a young Don Juan is found murdered and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari. As Montalbano works to solve both cases, he stumbles onto Sicily s ghastly ‘new age’ of brutal and anonymous criminality.

The Smell of the Night / Scent of the Night

Montalbano learned how hard it was to put on a wetsuit while in a dinghy speeding over a sea that wasn’t exactly calm. Mimi, at the helm, looked tense and worried. ‘Getting seasick?’ the inspector asked him at one point. ‘No. Just sick of myself.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because every now and then I realize what a stupid sh*it I am to go along with some of your brilliant ideas.’ When an angry octogenarian holds a terrified and lovelorn secretary at gunpoint, Inspector Montalbano is reluctantly drawn into the case. The secretary’s boss, a financial advisor, has vanished along with several billion lire entrusted to him by the good citizens of Vigata. Also missing is the advisor’s young colleague, whose uncle just happens to be building a house on the site of Inspector Montalbano’s very favourite olive tree…
Ably abetted by his loyal and eccentric team, Montalbano, the food loving, commitment phobic inspector, returns for another delicious investigation served up in vintage Camilleri style.

Rounding the Mark

Andrea Camilleri’s international bestselling mystery series features the earthy and urbane Sicilian detective Inspector Montalbano who casts his spell on more and more fans with each new mystery In Rounding the Mark, Inspector Montalbano discovers a corpse while swimming along the Sicilian shore. His pursuit of the cause of death intersects with the inquiry into a hit and run accident that claimed the life of a young boy who may have been victimized by human traffickers. The buying and selling of immigrant children, for slave labor, sex, and as a source of illegal organ transplants, is part of the evil underside of the opening of Europe’s borders. That, combined with frustration with his department’s repressive handling of security for the G8 summit in Genoa and the corruption among his superiors and the politicians behind them, makes setting anything right seem like an exercise in futility. Montalbano alternates between despair and steely resolve. When he realizes that he may have inadvertently aided the boy’s victimizers, his internal turmoil intensifies.

The Patience of the Spider

‘A brother,’ he said. Jesus Christ! Now where’d this brother come from? Whose brother? Montalbano had known from the start that between all the brothers, uncles, in laws, nephews and nieces, this case was going to drive him crazy. Chief Inspector Montalbano is on enforced sick leave. He is being vigorously looked after by his spirited girlfriend Livia, which unfortunately means his housekeeper an excellent cook has retreated in a fit of pique. Then when a local girl goes mysteriously missing, the whole community takes an interest in the case. But why are the kidnappers so sure that the girl’s impoverished father and dying mother will be able to find a fortune? The ever inquisitive Montalbano steps in, to get to the heart of the matter in his own inimitable style.

The Paper Moon

Motionless, Montalbano waited for the surf to enter his brain and wash it clean with each breaker. At last the first light wave came like a caress, swiiissshhh, and carried away, glugluglug, Elena Sclafani and her beauty, while Michela Pardo’s ti*ts, belly, arched body and eyes likewise disappeared. Once Montalbano the man was erased, all that should remain was Inspector Montalbano a kind of abstract function, the person who was supposed to solve the case and nothing more, with no personal feelings involved. But as he was telling himself this, he knew perfectly well that he could never pull it off. As he gets older, Inspector Montalbano is plagued by existential questions. But he doesn’t have much time to wax philosophical before the gruesome murder of a man shot in the face at point blank range with his pants down commands his attention. Add two evasive, beautiful women as prime suspects, dirty cocaine, dead politicians, mysterious computer codes, and a series of threatening letters, and things soon get very complicated at the police headquarters in Vigata. ‘Wonderful Italian detective stories’ ‘Guardian’. ‘A magnificent series of novels’ ‘Sunday Times’.

August Heat

When a colleague extends his summer vacation, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is forced to stay in Vigata and endure the August Heat. Montalbano’s long-suffering girlfriend, Livia, joins him with a friend husband and young son in tow to keep her company during these dog days of summer. But when the boy suddenly disappears into a narrow shaft hidden under the family’s beach rental, Montalbano uncovers something terribly sinister. As the inspector spends the summer trying to solve this perplexing case, Livia refuses to answer his calls and Montalbano is left to take a plunge that will affect the rest of his life. Fans of the Sicilian inspector as well as readers new to this increasingly popular series will enjoy following the melancholy but unflinchingly moral Montalbano as he undertakes one of the most shocking investigations of his career.

August Heat is read by Grover Gardner who won the prestigious 2009 Audietm Award for best narration in the mystery category for his reading of Camilleri’s Voice of the Violin.

The Wings of the Sphinx

Food, love, and murder Sicilian style in the gripping eleventh installment of The New York Times bestselling Montalbano mystery series. Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship with Livia is once again on the rocks and acutely aware of his age he is beginning to grow weary of the endless violence he encounters. Then a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off and only a tattoo of a sphinx moth giving any hint of her identity. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls all victims of the underworld sex trade who have been rescued from the Mafia night club circuit by a prominent Catholic charity. The problem is, Montalbano’s inquiries elicit an outcry from the Church and the three other girls are all missing.

The Track of Sand

‘The novels of Andrea Camilleri breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humor, and the sense of despair that fill the air of Sicily.’ Donna Leon Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes from strange dreams to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home. When his men came to investigate, the carcass has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Then his home is ransacked and the inspector is certain that the crimes are linked. As he negotiates both the glittering underworld of horseracing and the Mafia’s connection to it, Montalbano is aided by his illiterate housekeeper, Adelina, and a Proustian memory of linguate fritte. Longtime fans and new readers alike will be charmed by Montalbano’s blend of unorthodox methods, melancholy self reflection, and love of good food.

The Potter’s Field

Witty and entertaining, the Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri a master of the Italian detective story have become favorites of mystery fans everywhere. In this latest installment, an unidentified corpse is found near Vig ta, a town known for its soil rich with potter’s clay. Meanwhile, a woman reports the disappearance of her husband, a Colombian man with Sicilian origins who turns out to be related to a local mobster. Then Inspector Montalbano remembers the story from the Bible Judas’s betrayal, the act of remorse, and the money for The Potter’s Field, where those of unknown or foreign origin are to be buried and slowly, through myriad betrayals, finds his way to the solution to the crime.