A review by carolsnotebook
The Potter's Field by Andrea Camilleri

3.0

I wish I had read The Potter's Field in print, rather than listening to the audio. It's rare that I say that, most audiobooks I've listened to have been well dones, and in general I enjoy listening to mysteries; this one was just a little tough. I don't know why exactly, maybe there was just too much dialogue for an audio, a little too difficult to keep the speakers straight. Or maybe the voices of Inspector Salvo Montalbano and the other characters were not how I heard them in my head when I read the first in the series, The Shape of Water.

The Potter's Field is, at heart, a book about betrayal disguised as a mystery. An unidentified corpse is found in a clay field, the potters field. The body has been hacked into thirty pieces and placed in a black plastic bag. Salvo is reminded of the passage in Matthew 27 after Judas betrayed Jesus. From that point, they all seem to be walking in the Potter's Field, betrayals, both public and private, of friends, family, and lovers pile up. Salvo has to find his way through all the entangled threads to the truth without destroying the life of anyone he cares about.

The translation felt like it may have been a little clunky at times, but once again I think that would have been easier to overlook in print than it is in audio.