Rounding the Mark

Rounding the Mark is the seventh darkly humorous novel in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series.

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 person beside him didn't answer, because he wasn't doing the dead man's float. He was actually dead. And, to judge from the way he looked, he'd been so for quite a while.

Increasingly disillusioned with his government and the world in general, Inspector Montalbano is considering retirement. He is starting to feel his age, and even his favourite restaurant has closed. But when he bumps into a dead body during a bracing swim, his detective instincts are aroused once more. Particularly when the most likely identity of the victim is a man already long buried . . .

Rounding the Mark is followed by the eighth novel in the series, The Patience of the Spider.

PRAISE FOR THE SERIES

"A magnificent series of novels" Sunday Times

"There's a deliciously playful quality to the mysteries Andrea Camilleri writes about a lusty Sicilian police detective named Salvo Montalbano." New York Times Book Review

"Camilleri as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator." The Washington Post

"The books are full of sharp, precise characterizations and with subplots that make Montalbano endearingly human ... Like the antipasti that Montalbano contentedly consumes, the stories are light and easily consumed, leaving one eager for the next course." New York Journal of Books

"This series is distinguished by Camilleri's remarkable feel for tragicomedy, expertly mixing light and dark in the course of producing novels that are both comforting and disturbing." Booklist