The Potter's Field

August 22, 2011
Camilleri’s clever 13th Inspector Montalbano mystery (after 2010’s The Track of Sand) opens with the discovery of an unidentified body, cut into 30 pieces, in a remote field near the Sicilian town of Vigàta, known for soil rich with potter’s clay. Montalbano, who has a knack for finding gallows humor in even the most grotesque situations, believes the hacked-up body signifies the 30 pieces of silver Judas was paid for his betrayal. Later, Dolores Alfano, a stunning woman whose skin has “the faint scent of cinnamon,” reports that her husband, a sailor with ties to a local mobster, is missing. That Mimi Augello, one of Mantalbano’s most trusted inspectors, is in a permanent rage complicates matters. As usual, Montalbano wants to wrap up both cases quickly so he can get back to his real work—sleeping, eating, drinking, and dealing with his long-distance girlfriend, Livia.

October 1, 2011
Inspector Montalbano has extra difficulty solving a murder with biblical echoes when everyone around him gives him a taste of his own bristly medicine. After a disturbing dream, veteran Sicilian detective Salvo Montalbano awakens groggily to a ringing telephone and the report of a dead body found in the woods. It's a rainy day to boot, so Montalbano is anxious to finish the job and get dry. But his two sidekicks, Mimì and Fazio, are more interested in finishing a game than recovering the bagged corpse, and Catarella, the junior member of the team, further complicates the operation. In the end, the retrieval process proves to be a muddy comedy of errors, exacerbated by the fact that the body "drifts," ending up in pieces, and by the sheer irascibility of Pasquale Ajena, who first found it on his land. Far from an anomaly, the prickly behavior of everyone around Montalbano seems to become a pattern, most disturbingly in his formerly devoted lover Livia, whose sudden contrariness agitates but doesn't change him. Could the crazed motorist who gets his jollies by nearly hitting a young female pedestrian be connected to the dismembered victim? Is the crime really connected to the Mafia? Why has Mimì kept his recent marriage a secret? And why is Catarella weeping? Montalbano has never been one for just the facts, ma'am, but his 13th recorded case (The Track of Sand, 2010, etc.) goes appealingly over the top into slapstick and character-driven farce. Especially recommended for series fans and mystery readers who enjoy the journey more than the solution.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

October 1, 2011

The Inspector (The Track of Sand) is confronted with a complex case of betrayal in the latest in a literate and compelling series. Consider the dual meaning of a potter's field for openers.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2011
The comedy in Camilleri's distinctive brand of tragicomic mystery is largely absent this time. Sicilian policeman Salvo Montalbano has misplaced his sustaining life force, the inner engine that enables him to focus not on the wave of senseless crime that threatens to engulf the small seaside town of Vigata but, instead, on his next plate of perfectly cooked pasta. Food isn't doing the trick any longer, not after an unidentified corpse leads to a hornet's nest of murder, betrayal, and lives gone wrong. That the central crime seems somehow connected to the Bible story of Judas' betrayal only serves to make the tragedy feel all the more uncontainable. Yes, life-loving Salvo appears to be drifting into Kurt Wallander territory here, his ever-stooping shoulders, like those of Henning Mankell's Swedish detective, unable to bear the weight of an overwhelming world. And, yet, Camilleri is a master at manipulating light and dark, and there is a still a speck of light on the horizon: at least, Montalbano muses at the end of the novel, he remains able to sit and gaze at the sea, which, despite what happens on shore, is still the sea.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)