Andrea Camilleri Inspector Montalbano Mysteries 10 Books Collection Set (Series 1)
The Shape of Water
The goats of Vigata once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. But their discreet trade is upset when two employees of the Splendour Refuse Collection Company discover the body of engineer Silvio Luparello, one of the local movers and shakers, apparently deceased in flagrante at the Pasture.
The Terracotta Dog
The Terracotta Dog opens with a mysterious tête-à-tête with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and some dying words that lead Inspector Montalbano to a secret grotto in a mountain cave where two young lovers dead fifty years and still embracing are watched over by a life-size terracotta 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.
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 suspects a link between the two incidents.
The 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.
Excursion to Tindari
Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple’s disappearance. They’d saved everything . . . there was even a copy of the ‘certificate of living existence’, that nadir of bureaucratic imbecility . . . What was the ‘protocol’, to use a word dear to government offices? Did one simply write on a sheet of paper something like: ‘I, the undersigned, Salvo Montalbano, hereby declare myself to be in existence’, sign it, and turn it in to the appointed clerk?
The 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. Mimì, 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 shit 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.
Rounding the Mark
He began swimming in slow, broad strokes. The sea smelled harsh, stinging his nostrils like champagne, and he nearly got drunk on it . . . In a fraction of a second, Montalbano realized he’d struck a human foot. Somebody else was floating right beside him, and he hadn’t noticed.“Excuse me,” he said hastily, flipping back onto his belly and looking over at the other.
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. But when a local girl goes mysteriously missing, the whole community takes an interest in the case. 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 tits, 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.
August Heat
As seen on TV: now a major BBC4 television series. Montalbano quickly slammed the trunk shut and sat down on top of it. When the beam from Livia’s torch shone on his face, he automatically smiled. ‘What’s in the trunk?’ Livia asked. ‘Nothing. It’s empty.’ How could he possibly have told her there was a corpse inside? The lazy, slow month of August at the height of the Sicilian summer is, Inspector Montalbano assures his girlfriend Livia as they prepare for a relaxing holiday in a villa he has found for them, far too hot for any murders to be committed.
