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A review by p_t_b
The Smell of the Night by Andrea Camilleri
4.0
continuing to deliver the inspector montalbano brand essence which is:
- constant, horny thoughts about seafood
- answering the question "what if Elmore Leonard was weirder and italian and slightly more literary"
this one gets wild when montalbano's beloved, possibly clairvoyant olive tree gets chopped down by a guy building a condo ("new construction" is a glorious b-plot antagonist emerging in the last few of these). (also montalbano commits legit and hilarious property crimes to secure vengeance for his tree)
anyway the condo builder turns out to tie into this emerging plot about a bernie madoff type swindler, and then you can pretty much run the tape of the shtick from there. some unfortunate and backwards-looking ideas about women get thrown around but it's not like camelleri paints the male characters as less flawed and captive to bad ideas. this was written by like an 80 year old guy 20 some years ago. there is also curveball where the denouement involves montalbano hallucinating that he is living inside the william faulkner short story "a rose for emily"
all of these get 4 stars because they are wonderful and brainy but also dumb when needed and blessedly short
- constant, horny thoughts about seafood
- answering the question "what if Elmore Leonard was weirder and italian and slightly more literary"
this one gets wild when montalbano's beloved, possibly clairvoyant olive tree gets chopped down by a guy building a condo ("new construction" is a glorious b-plot antagonist emerging in the last few of these). (also montalbano commits legit and hilarious property crimes to secure vengeance for his tree)
anyway the condo builder turns out to tie into this emerging plot about a bernie madoff type swindler, and then you can pretty much run the tape of the shtick from there. some unfortunate and backwards-looking ideas about women get thrown around but it's not like camelleri paints the male characters as less flawed and captive to bad ideas. this was written by like an 80 year old guy 20 some years ago. there is also curveball where the denouement involves montalbano hallucinating that he is living inside the william faulkner short story "a rose for emily"
all of these get 4 stars because they are wonderful and brainy but also dumb when needed and blessedly short