by Marie-Luise Stromer

Created on: January 23, 2011

Commissario Salvo Montalbano has got a long-term, long-distance lady-friend, Livia. He lives in the south of Sicily, she in Genoa, 1440 km to the north. One summer he has to work and she decides to come to Sicily with a friend, her husband and their three-year-old son so that she’s got company when Montalbano can’t spend time with her. She asks him to look for a summer house for her friends, he finds a pretty, free-standing one with the beach just below, anything should be fine.

One day the little boy disappears. He’s fallen into an opening under the house, close inspection reveals that the house has really two storeys, not only the one that can be seen. The first was built and then covered with soil because it’s illegal to build two-storey houses there. The owner had intended to wait for an amnesty concerning this breach of law and then uncover the apartment on the ground floor. Montalbano finds the boy and when he looks more closely round the underground rooms, he discovers a big chest with a dead girl in it. It must have lain there for abut six years. Not surprisingly, Livia and her friends leave at once and Montalbano has another case to solve. As he’s a grumpy and factious man by nature and more often than not his encounters with Livia end in arguments, he’s not too unhappy to be alone again.

The crime follows an age-old pattern - there aren’t too many reasons why murders are committed - but it’s firmly embedded in Sicilian reality. This begins with the hidden apartment which is nothing special in Sicily and goes on with the way people react when questioned. Background info on a suspect reveals a typical Sicilian career with Mafia connections. The inspector knows who’s who in his town, who to molest for answers, who not to touch with a barge pole. Camilleri’s thrillers with Montalbano are always also social criticism on the political and social conditions in present-day Sicily without being preachy, though. I’ve heard of Sicilians who’re happy with his descriptions of their island, its history, its problems, its people, its beauty and its food. Camilleri was born in Porto Empedocle in the south of Sicily but has lived in Rome for decades as a theatre director and screen writer, but he hasn’t forgotten the special feel of his home island.

Unfortunately, I can’t read Italian literature, but even if I could, I’d have problems understanding the Montalbano thrillers,

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