Treasure Hunt

God I needed a break from that blathering Ishmael and mad Ahab.  So I took the opportunity to go back to the latest Salvo Montalbano story, that I'd left because it seemed a bit slow.  Turns that the unimaginatively titled Treasure Hunt (Penguin, 2013 in English translation) heats up quite a bit at the end.

The contrast between Herman Melville's dense verbiage and Andrea Camilleri's spare prose finally made me realize what is so distinctive about the latter's style.  A Montalbano mystery is almost all dialogue.  It is what I imagine reading a television script might be like, without a lot of stage direction.  The only inner voice we hear is Salvo's, and even that is often presented in dialogue form between his good and bad sides.  When you think about it, it is pretty amazing that he manages to draw the other characters so well almost entirely through their interactions with Montalbano.  

In this story, Salvo is bored out of his gourd because nothing is going on at his station.  Well, nothing other than a daring raid he executed on the home of a nutty old sniper who was living in lunatic squalor with equally ga-ga old sister. Salvo is captured on national TV climbing into their apartment to resolved the situation, and becomes a brief local celebrity.  Still, Salvo can barely bring himself to Thanks to this unwelcome notoriety, he's also getting some vaguely creepy anonymous notes offering clues in a treasure hunt that seem to target him.  Salvo is intrigued but too lazy to do much about it until the fabulous Ingrid's nephew happens along, looking to learn more about the policeman's brain and Salvo takes him on as a sort of unpaid intern to deal with the treasure hunt.  But really, the whole story was kind of farting along (which it turns out is the point) and that's why I put it down for Moby Dick. But not long after I picked it up again, a girl disappeared and the plot snowballed down into a very dark place, with a disturbing crime that tied it all up.

I've said in other reviews what I like about Camielleri's books:  interesting characters, drawn with just a few strokes of what I realize now are largely dialogue, darker-than-you'd-expect crimes, wonderfully spare settings of sun and sand and landscape, and of course, a great attention to food.  The regular characters - Fazio and Mimi, Gallo and Gallucio, Cattarella - get a little shorter shrift in this one than I recall in others, although the enigmatic Ingrid features more prominently.  But I'm pleased to report that Adelina and her pasta 'ncasciata and swordfish involtini and arancini and eggplant parmesan and caciocavallo cheese and Enzo and his trattoria's spaghetti alle vongole veraci and striped mullett are all present and accounted for.   

The Dance of the Seagull

This is harder than I've been prepared to admit.

It only struck me with The Dance of the Seagull (2013, Penguin), just how much driving Salvo Montalbano and his crew do in these novels.  They are all over the place, thinking nothing of an hour or two there and back.  It's kind of like the American West, where people will drive 100 miles for dinner because they can do it going 100 mph.  I wish that Andrea Camilleri would include a map in his novels, so that I could sort out where, exactly, all of this is taking place on Sicily.  There are tours you can take of Montalbano's Sicily, but since I don't have plans to travel there (soon, anyway), I'll have to just do with imagining.

The Dance of the Seagull is a bit of a departure from Camilleri's usual sordid-not-so-under-belly-of-Sicily, in that the initial victim is none other than Salvo's sensible lieutenant Fazio.  Of course, the attack on Fazio happens because he is on the verge of discovering some nasty acts by some very bad guys, and the plot moves along quickly to involve the usual assortment of drug smugglers, transvestites, honey traps, mafiosi, bumbling jurists, grumpy pathologists, and so on.  This is not to say that any story featuring Salvo and his crowd is ever REMOTELY formulaic.  Rather it is that the neatly sketched characters and refreshingly non-per-le-touriste-Sicilia situations are regular elements to be happily anticipated, and slowly savored in every one of the Salvo stories.  Camilleri doesn't waste a lot of time, his scenes and dialogue move fast, and there is not so much in the way of long, deep introspective internal dialogue from anyone. Well, we do get Salvo's good and bad halves (Montalbano 1 and 2) arguing with each other occasionally, but they don't drag it out.  And nobody else thinks much, they just do.

A couple of differences from earlier stories.  Livia makes just a brief appearance, and an uncharacteristically gracious exit.  More critical is that there is a whole lot less eating going on!  Yes, of course Salvo visits Enzo's trattoria, and Adeli leaves some caponata or pasta 'ncasciata or something but mealtime just didn't seem quite the distraction that it has been in earlier stories.  And while there is a dalliance with a beautiful woman, it somehow seemed more clear than some of those in the past.  Who can figure out what Ingrid's role ever was, anyway?  Finally, the terrific translator notes at the back have been shrinking in the recent books, now comprising just a couple of pages of notes.

Perhaps I am the one distracted, as I am finding it hard to focus my thoughts.  So let's wind it up by saying that in any case, this latest entry is among the best in the delightful Salvo Montalbano series.

Sum-mertiiiiiiiime, and the reading is . . .

My bathside bookpile has grown enormously after my birthday - so excited to have the newest le Carré, A Delicate Truth on top.  But I find myself uncharacteristically too distracted to dive in immediately to his elegantly bleak worldview, so I may need to check in instead with Salvo Montalbano in perpetually summery Sicily, in The Dance of the Seagull.  For tropical splendor, there is also Graeme Kent's One Blood, the next in that Solomons Islands series although I seem to recall reading an interview with the author somewhere that left me a little unsettled about the series (I have a recollection of his coming across as a bit colonialist - but maybe my antennae were overtuned).  If it is winter that I need for a break I could always pick up Detective Inspector Huss where I left off.  I dropped it because it was kind of boring - everyone was so pleasant and it had a stilted quality that you sometimes find in translated works. Talking about winter, and cold, pretty much all year, I also started Melanie (M.J.) McGrath's The Long Exile, because I so enjoyed White Heat.  The exile in question is a forced removal of Inuit from the eastern side of Hudson Bay well north to Ellesmere Island.  I stopped reading after a while because I found it pretty dull, but it had a glowing review in the NYT in 2007, so maybe I should try again.  The reviewer found it mesmerizing; must be something wrong with my glasses.  

While stocking up at Porter Square Books for my son's camp session this year, I discovered Matthew Pearl's The Last Dickens in the sale box, as well as P.D. James' Talking About Detective Fiction.  The latter should provide some good fodder for Crime Pays, and if nothing else, a brisk reminder of how really smart people think and write.

And these are just the books in the house; I have a long list going of things that I want to read that I haven't even laid my hands on yet.  Damn this working business.

But how have I come this far and not read any of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe novels?  Good god, this must be rectified immediately.  It may require a trip to the library, since the Wolfe stories are many and old.  

Wolfe reminds me that I'm starting to read a few food blogs regularly, too.  I like David Lebovitz, and Dinner:  A Love Story (although it veers close to cute at times).  I read Smitten Kitchen even when it feels a little full of itself (does a book deal do that?), and My Little Expat Kitchen (she's Greek!).  A recent discovery is the charming Miss Foodwise, who writes about British food (a whole article on a watercress farm - imagine!).  And I just can't decide if I love or hate The Wednesday Chef.  Mostly the former, and the latter is just jealousy of that damn perfect Italian place so get over it.  That chicken curry with sweet potatoes was pretty good.

The Age of Doubt

I like to read in situ, when possible, which means that if I am travelling to, say, England, I like to read books set there. So, being on an island for vacation, I brought along the latest Andrea Camilleri, The Age of Doubt (Penguin, 2012) because of course it takes place in Sicily, which is, yes, an island. But the other, far more in-situ book on my bedtable, Geraldine Brooks' Caleb's Crossing (Viking, 2011) called, since it takes place on the actual island that I am on, Martha's Vineyard (not to mention my hometown of Cambridge, MA). Actually, I started Caleb first but tossed it aside as too introspective for my mood - if I am not introspective, why would I waste my leisure-reading time on people who are? - which was a mistake because then, guilt-ridden, Camilleri didn't satisfy either. I'm glad I returned to Caleb, because that is a lovely novel that New Englanders, Vineyarders, Cantabrigians, and really anyone interested in 17th c. lives should read.

And as always, I am glad that I returned then to Camilleri's perpetually exasperated and hungry masterpiece of Salvo Montalbano. Our hero is aging, however, and we find him here contemplating death, doubting his abilities, hornswoggled a bit by younger women, and possibly newly in love (the long-time girlfriend Livia notwithstanding, she makes only a cameo appearance on the phone here, although she is forever in his thoughts since one of the principal bad guys is a sexual predator named Livia).  Like The Potter's Field, this is a return to the better Camilleri.  The actual crime - well, other than the unidentified corpse in the dinghy - is not revealed until pretty late in the tale, but we know something fishy is going on, and we're happy to join Salvo as he tries to figure it out.

There are certain set pieces in Montalbano novels, that please readers of series like me. It wouldn't be the same, if, say, Catarella didn't talk like he was straight out of a dumb side of Brooklyn, or Salvo didn't visit Enzo for a delicious meal, or take a contemplative walk on the jetty afterward, or a hot shower in his enticingly attractive seaside home in Marinella.  Where would he be without housekeeper Adelina to cook for him, devoted underling Fazio to figure everything out, wayward underling Augello to test his manhood by boasting of his own exploits? 

Another thing that I like about Camilleri's writing is how he reveals the plot in little vignettes, and doesn't spend a lot of time setting the scene or describing any backstory to us.  Salvo has to figure it out, and so we do along with him.  The comparatively ornate settings of, say, a Louise Penny or Charles Finch (part of the cozy mystery crowd) just don't happen here, we see the police station and Enzo's and the harbor just in outline.  And while Salvo engages in a continual internal dialogue (what detective does not?), it is not as explicative as that in say, a Martin Walker novel, where the dialogue between characters is a major tool for providing key backstory details. 

I thought at first that the translated aspect of these novels was what underpinned their spare literary style, since it is somewhat reminiscent of Henning Mankel, for example, another author we read in translation.  But of course, the translators (in this case, Stephen Sartarelli, who has done almost all of Camilleri's novels) are translating what was written by the author, they aren't adding or subtracting text, I don't think. 

The Age of Doubt has a more shocking ending than most of Salvo's adventures.  It really took my breath away here on this island, and I wonder, how will he recover from this one?  The way he always does:  spending time at home, eating at Enzo's (eventually) and perhaps a visit from Livia.  We'll just have to see because this is clearly not the end of Salvo Montalbano. 

Vendetta

Here's the thing about Michael Dibdin's Vendetta (Vintage Crime, ed. 1998), the second Aurelio Zen mystery:  it isn't actually that much about the crime that Zen is reviewing when the story starts.  It is nominally, and there is a vendetta there, but Zen may also be subject of one, or maybe of several vendettas himself, depending on you read his office's politics and personal life.  The plot layering in this novel is a bit like a sfogliatelle - you wonder if you can keep track of all those leaves, but they stick around like little crumbs in your consciousness well after you've finished the book.  I found this frustrating at the time of reading, but now having finished, it makes quite a bit of sense.  And in fact, Vendetta's bare-bones plotting on each of these is reminiscent of Andrea Cammilleri - nothing extraneous, and you'd better pay attention or you'll miss the key detail.

He's a pretty unhappy fellow is our Zen, in an almost Nordic-crime kind of way, but he doesn't Wallander in it.  And he's Italian for godssake so at least he is stylish about it, although I don't see him as a sfogliatelle kind of guy.  Coffee is his thing:

"Across the street from the newsstand, at the corner of the next block, was the cafe which Zen frequented, largely because it had resisted the spreading blight of skimmed milk, which had reduced the rich foam of a proper cappucino to an insipid froth.  The barman, whose face sported a luxuriant moustache to compensate for his glossily bald skull, greeted Zen with respectful warmth."

I'm never ordering a skim cappucino again. 

Part of the reason that I like crime fiction set elsewhere than the US, is the obvious escapist factor.  Somehow it's just better on the Palatine Hill (there's a great quiet but nervy scene here where Zen uses the Palatine ruins to lose a tail).  But the REALLY good stuff also washes away any sentimental romance you may hold for a place.  Case in point with Vendetta:  Sardinia.  I've always thought it looked lovely, kind of like a more cosmopolitan Corsica, which I loved.  But this story bypasses the glamorous Costa Smeralda for a harsh, non-touristed, arid, and terribly dangerous interior, where your life isn't worth much and no one will particularly care if it ends.  I'm re-thinking Sardinia now, too. 

The Italians

Talk about inspiring dinner.  Italian detectives are the best-fed on the planet. Here's another catch-up post.
I've discussed my fave, Andrea Camilleri, in another post here on CP.  I never really cottoned to Donna Leon's series set in Venice, although I know many adore her just as much as I do Cammilleri.  I tried a couple, and they felt a bit complicated, dare I say, too Venetian, for my taste.  But I've got a whole bunch on my bookcase, so if you want to borrow any, stop by. 

Italian crime seems strongly defined by place.  There is also a series set in Florence, by a British writer named Magdalen Nabb.  Our hero, such as he is, is known as Marshal Guarnaccia, who must deal with tourists and the carabinieri alike, and it is not entirely clear which irritates him more.  He is closer in spirit to Montalbano (he is, in fact, also Sicilian, which makes him something of an anomaly in fab Firenze) than anyone else I've come across, and the stories are similarly dry in their telling.  They aren't particularly complicated but I always feel vaguely lost, which I've come to think is actually the sign of a good crime novel.  Who wants to figure it all out in the third chapter?
 
I also read a couple of Grace Brophy's Commissario Alessandro Cenni series, set in Assisi.  They weren't bad but I was deeply into Camilleri and Nabb at the time, and these didn't stand out, so on to the shelf they went.  I seem to recall that Cenni really liked tramezzini, which are a kind of thin Italian sandwich, just a bit twee when put up against Salvo's housekeeper Adelina's caponata.

I've got an Aurelio Zen (Michael Dibdin) next to the tub, that I've been meaning to get to, having sort of enjoyed the television adaptation of a year or so ago.  The TV version was not ideal because some of the actors were British, and some were Italian, so that was distracting.  But you know, anything set in Rome offers some distraction, and with its good-looking cast and Mad Men-cool music, this was no exception.

I guess maybe I haven't read that many Italians after all, but perhaps they are as my friend Dan says of pizza and other pleasures, even when bad, they have their redeeming qualities.

The Potter's Field

What a delight it is during a gray New England January, to join Salvatore Montalbano on his veranda overlooking the beach at Marinella.  There might be a cold bottle of white wine, perhaps a bowl of olives, certainly some tumasso or caciocavallo, and maybe we are anticipating some purpiteddro a strascinasali or some other delicacy left by Adelina, for later.  Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series may be uneven, but Salvo is one of the great eaters of the crime fiction genre.  I can't actually think of any other detective who derives such elemental pleasure from a meal, or who will stop everything in an investigation because it is lunch time.  It is as if he is a plant in need of watering, once fed (well) our hero can get on with solving the crime at hand. 

The Potter's Field (2008, trans. version 2011) is the latest in this marvelous series, and a return to the classic bones after a strange detour with The Track of Sand.  Montalbano and his supporting cast of characters at the Vigata station - Cattarella, Fazio, Augello - are only surface buffoons, in fact they are the wise fools of an otherwise mostly idiotic Sicilian system of justice.  As in all the books, Montalbano's patience is tried one million ways by the public, the prosecutors, the media, the Mafia, at least one gorgeous dame, and of course several exquisite meals.  He is a grump with a heart of, well, not quite gold, but perhaps a very good cheese (about as valuable in Salvo's and my world), perpetually misunderstood by but simultaneously enraging his long-term gal-pal Livia, who lives in the north.  This is the thirteenth book in the series, and it is worth reading them in order, to truly understand the relationships that exist and to become completely in tune with Salvo's views on things.  To reach this point is to understand instantly why he and Livia end most phone calls in a rage, why a call to the prosecutor's office is so disheartening, and why we care at all if Mimi is in a bad mood. This novel starts with a dismembered body, moves on to a missing husband, and then here comes the Mafia.  I expect that upon finishing it, I'll be left with a fractured recollection of the sun, sea, nasty crimes, beautiful women, and pasta with sea urchins, which is pretty much what I remember from all of them. 

Camilleri's style is what I imagine the Sicilian landscape to be like, a bit arid, brilliantly lit, nothing wasted (the necessity born of poverty?) and occasionally hiding some valuable bit of information.  Little time is wasted setting a scene, the action moves along with rapid dialogue, but there are never those dreadful cliffhangers, it is just that the characters mostly engage with each other or the situation, rather than letting the writer sit around ruminating about it.  One feels completely absorbed in whatever is happening as if one were riding along, sitting in on the interrogation, or invited for dinner (I wish).  I'll have the nunnatu fritters, please.