The Safety Net

January 6, 2020
Bestseller Camilleri’s 25th outing for Insp. Salvo Montalbano (after 2019’s The Other End of the Line) offers a rich, nuanced mix of plot elements. Besides looking into a mysterious but nonfatal terror attack on a school, Montalbano has an unsought but unshakable obsession with a strange series of home movies belonging to a local resident with a tragic family history. The films show nothing but the same piece of a crumbling wall, each year from 1958 to 1963. He must also deal with a Swedish TV production that’s taken over his Sicilian town of Vigàta and made everything look as it did in the 1950s. The rhythms and layers of the aging detective’s thoughts, routines, and speech are droll and subtle, and fans will be attuned to Montalbano’s attempt to reckon with a serious past mistake. As the cases conclude, with none of the resolutions showing up on official records, readers will feel a pang of loss that this may be one of the last visits they’ll have from an old, wise friend. Camilleri died in 2019, having completed several books for posthumous publication. Agent: Carmen Prestia, Alferjeprestia (Italy).

January 15, 2020
Murder, meltdowns, and a boisterous Swedish film crew bring chaos to a veteran police chief and his Sicilian community. Inspector Montalbano has his hands full when a television crew from Sweden invades his bailiwick. To celebrate the linking of Vigàta with its sister city, Kalmar, Swedish TV is filming a movie about a romance between a Swedish girl and a "youth from Vigàta." All this bustle is a nuisance to the world-weary Montalbano (The Other End of the Line, 2019, etc.), who coincidentally finds himself investigating an odd case that involves the cinema. Ernesto Sabatello has discovered a reel of film from decades ago: a collection of shots taken by his father, Francesco, once a year over a series of years. The boring film shows just a patch of wall, apparently unchanged year after year. Montalbano is intrigued, but it takes him quite a while to focus on this puzzle when distractions come in the form of a melee between Swedes and Sicilians and the need to referee the marital battle between his quirky detective, Mimì, and Mimì's wife, Beba. This last becomes unexpectedly serious when Mimì attempts suicide. The discovery that Francesco had a twin brother named Emanuele, who apparently committed suicide in 1957, makes the case even curiouser. Montalbano's attentiveness to Swedish visitor Ingrid and her blond bear sidekick, the director Gustav, puts a new wrinkle in his relationship with girlfriend Livia. Then another investigation concerning an incident at a school is added to his crowded plate. When disaffected teens emerge as the prime suspects, Montalbano fears for the state of the world. Both darker and more absurd than previous romps, the latest Montalbano is a bracing cautionary tale.

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March 1, 2020

Inspector Montalbano is feeling under siege. A Swedish film crew has descended on his Sicilian village of Vigàta to film a TV period piece and the townspeople are all aflutter. The chaos is making Montalbano's sacred solitary lunches a thing of the past and is causing no end of headaches for his fellow officers. One afternoon, a local man presents the inspector with a titillating find; six Super-8 movies that his father shot in the late 1950s; each contains the same recording. The films show an outside wall, on the same day, for six consecutive years. With very little to go on, the inspector begins digging into the family's past, and a tragic tale slowly takes shape. While all this is happening, a parallel story unfolds involving Montalbano's second-in-command and an inexplicable and terrifying incident at a local school. Revered Italian author Camilleri (1925-2019; The Other End of the Line, The Shape of Water, Death in Sicily) created an enduring, award-winning series that is internationally recognized. This 25th book is absorbing, cerebral, and infused with humor as well as tantalizing descriptions of Sicilian cuisine. VERDICT Strongly recommended for purchase where the series is known, this book will also serve as a fine introduction to Camilleri's oeuvre.--Amy Nolan, St. Joseph, MI

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2020
Camilleri's death in 2019 left many wondering if there were a few installments of the author's Sicily-set Inspector Montalbano series still to be published in the U.S. Happily, here's one. The alternately melancholic and life-loving inspector is a bit off his feed this time?literally, as a Swedish television company working in Vig�ta has turned Montalbano's favorite restaurant, his friend Enzo's trattoria, into a madhouse of loud-talking movie people. Fortunately, there are two peculiar cases to keep his mind off the barbarians at Enzo's: first is the matter of Ernesto Sabatello's deceased father, who filmed a blank wall on the same day, March 27, from 1958 to 1963. Why? Ernesto, who recently found the films, wants Montalbano to "investigate"?just the kind of oddball conundrum the inspector loves. Then, in a more serious matter, two gunmen have invaded a classroom and fired shots into the ceiling before bolting. Again, why? Montalbano finds the answers but is forced to conclude that "the truth was sometimes better kept under wraps." Much ado about nothing? Yes, maybe, but with the charismatic inspector, nothing is always more than it seems.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)