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 Dogopens with the inspector's mysterious tête-à-tête 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.
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Publisher:
New York : Viking, 2002.
ISBN:
9780670031382
0670031380
0670031380
Branch Call Number:
F
Characteristics:
340 pages ; 20 cm
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Add a CommentOne of the best things about this series as translated by Stephen Sartarelli, is the inclusion of uniquely Italian sayings in the back of the book. If you don't know the language, you'll need to flip back to the notes to understand everything completely.
Andrea Camilleri is a gifted writer. He can smoothly move from portraying vivid scenery to describing hilarious actions performed by inept policemen to communicating the taste of mouth-watering Sicilian fish dishes. Who else could come up with a skeletal old priest who drinks milk from baby bottles?
I was completely captivated by this novel. The super-intelligent Inspector Montalbano finds himself involved in mysteries both young and old...I can't wait to read the next in the series.
I liked this book better than the first Montalbano book. I am not really quite sure why, but I think it helped that I was more familiar with his writing style and characters. I especially liked the part that dealt with the WWII case, which took longer than I excepted to get to in the book. Terra-Cotta Dog feels authentically Sicilian. I really loved how Montalbano, a normally confident man, did not like doing press conferences and did not want a promotion. These personality quarks help to make Montalbano unique.
This was a really well written mystery. I really enjoyed the pacing and how everything was revealed. Not a bad ending either!