Search - The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, Bk 2)

Intriguing mystery set in Sicily, with many amusing moments and great characters.

This was my first book by the author and from the very first pages you feel an affinity for the inspector. Montalbano's latest case begins with a mysterious têtê à têtê with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, the inspector finds two young lovers, dead for fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-sized terra-cotta dog. Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takes him on a journey through Sicily's past and into one family's darkest secrets. This is an easy book to get into. The author easily takes you through Sicilian temperament.

As in the first of the Inspector Montalbano series, The Shape of Water, this story slowly unfolds allowing you to meet exceptional characters who have experienced exceptional lives. You see the culture and history that is set in Sicily, which is a part of Italy, but is an area of its own. The smart and resourceful police detective keeps you turning pages.

This is the second of the Inspector Salvo Montalbano mysteries, which are set in contemporary Sicily. 200 pages is a tad lengthy for a police procedural mystery, but the plot twists and briskly paced action justify the length. Montalbano is hard to like: arbitrary with subordinates, abrupt with friends, ungrateful toward his housekeeper and cook Adelina, thoughtless with his mistress Livia, and monstrous toward Anna who recklessly adores him. Half a dozen characters rightly tell him what a sh*t he is, but it has no effect on his rotten behavior. Bringing to mind Tey’s A Daughter of Time (in which a convalescing cop exonerates Richard III), Montalbano, recovering from being shot during a meeting with an informer, works on a 50-year-old murder case. This book held my interest. The translator Stephen Sartarelli has provided an excellent notes section at the end that explains background of contemporary Italian politics and society and Sicilian culture and phrases.

This was the first book by this author I read. I will definately continue the series. I enjoyed it especially since I am an Italian. The author mixed in Italian humor with WWII history making an interesting read.

I would reccomend it.
Carol

Great read!