The Dance of the Seagull

The Dance of the Seagull (2013) Andrea Camilleri

I really love the Inspector Montalbano series.

In fact, I received this ARC yesterday when I got home from work, started reading it, and continued reading until I was finished, despite it being past my bedtime on a work night. :)

Salvo Montalbano is getting old.

He doesn’t like it, but he does recognize the fact that he’s not as fit as he used to be, that he doesn’t sleep as well as he used to, and he worries that maybe he’s become less of a detective than he was.

He also hasn’t gotten any better at his relationship with Liva, which has been a sore point for me throughout this series, but for the first time I actually have a sense of why they remain together, despite everything.

But although his getting old is part of the story, it’s not the mystery. The mystery is much more disturbing: Fazio has disappeared.

According to the Arc, no quotes until the book has been published, so you don’t get to know the bits that made me laugh our loud and annoy Michael with my reading them to him, but rest assured, Catarella is still Catarella.

Actually, Inspector Montalbano’s relationship with Catarella is one of the things I especially liked, as Catarella’s “poissonally in poisson” seems to be spreading. When I first started reading the series, I thought that Montalbano was mean for the sake of being mean to Catarella, but the more books I read, the more I came to understand that 1) Montalbano is an asshole to everyone and 2) he actually cares about Catarella, despite the fact that Catarella must be insanely annoying to deal with.

And despite being a huge asshole, it becomes clearer than ever in this story that Montalbano loves the men he works with (forgive me, inspector, that word you would never use).

SPOILER (rot 13)
V jnf gbhpurq ol Zbagnyonab’f ernpgvba gb gur gubhtug gung Snmvb jnf qrnq, naq gb gur rkgerzrf ur jrag gb xrrc Snmvb fnsr nsgre ur unq orra sbhaq.
END SPOILER

It just serves to remind me that no matter how much of an asshole he is, so very much of that is cover for how important those around him–and justice–are to him in a way that made sense to me–an American reader–in a way that wasn’t clear in previous books. (I see this as a failing on my part as a reader, in my unfamiliarity with Italian culture.)

I was also amused by the meta comments, about an apparent TV series in Italy, and Montalbano complaining that the actor who portrays him is bald.

I continue to love this series, and am saddened by the thought that with Montalbano continuing to age, there can’t be many more years left in this series.

If you have not read a previous book in this series, you should be fine picking this up, though you’d be missing out on much of the continued character development. But as I said, this book does a good job of showing the complexity of Montalbano’s relationships with those around him.
Rating: 8.5/10

Published by Penguin

Received this ARC through a Goodreads giveaway, and will be released Feb 26, 2013.

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