The Track of Sand

September 20, 2010
At the start of bestseller Camilleri's robust 12th Inspector Montalbano mystery (after 2009's The Wings of the Sphinx), the Sicilian inspector looks out his window and sees the carcass of a horse on the beach. The animal, he discovers, has been bludgeoned to death. As he turns his back to phone in the crime, the horse vanishes, leaving a track in the sand. Was the horse slaughtered for its meat by illegal immigrants? Is someone trying to send a message to the owner? Or is the Mafia edging its way into the racing industry? The repeated vandalizing of Montalbano's home and a Mafia thug's murder complicate the investigation. The street-smart inspector takes a broadly comic trip to the racetrack in an effort to link all these events together. While convoluted plotting and byzantine complexities distract, Montalbano uses some creative chicanery and tweaking of the law to provide a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

The irascible police inspector Salvo Montalbano, at 56 and counting, is splendidly evoked by Grover Gardner as he battles with prescient dreams, contentious peers, failing eyesight, and brutally murdered horses. In Camilleri's 12th Sicilian police novel, a dead horse discovered on Montalbano's beach launches a convoluted unofficial investigation that leads the bachelor police inspector--think Maigret meets Columbo--to Mafioso and horse racing, as well as seductions and many amazing Italian meals. Italian accents do not rule Gardener's narration, but the voices of the gruff Montalbano, his seductive female acquaintances, and his hard-pressed staff are all unique snapshots of character. Even the minor characters, such as a peasant with a cell phone and a cuckolded husband with the "voice of a dubber of porn flicks," are all immensely entertaining. D.P.D. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine