The Paper Moon (Inspector Montalbano mysteries) - Softcover

Andrea Camilleri

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330458116 ISBN 13: 9780330458115

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Books India, 2008

Synopsis

Motionless, Montalbano waited for the surf to enter his brain and wash it clean with each breaker. At last the first light wave came like a caress, swiiissshhh, and carried away, glugluglug, Elena Sclafani and her beauty, while Michela Pardo's tits, belly, arched body and eyes likewise disappeared. Once Montalbano the man was erased, all that should remain was Inspector Montalbano - a kind of abstract function, the person who was supposed to solve the case and nothing more, with no personal feelings involved. But as he was telling himself this, he knew perfectly well that he could never pull it off. As he gets older, Inspector Montalbano is plagued by existential questions. But he doesn't have much time to wax philosophical before the gruesome murder of a man - shot at point-blank range in the face with his pants down - commands his attention. Add two evasive, beautiful women as prime suspects, dirty cocaine, dead politicians, mysterious computer codes, and a series of threatening letters, and things soon get very complicated at the police headquarters in Vigata. `[Camilleri is] a joy to read' Sunday Times

About this title

About the Author:

Andrea Camilleri is one of Italy's most famous contemporary writers. His Montalbano series has been adapted for Italian television and translated into nine languages. He lives in Rome.

From Booklist:

Salvo Montalbano, the beleaguered police inspector in the Sicilian community of Vigata, suffers from a kind of laid-back bipolarism, alternating between a gourmand’s love of sensual pleasures and a melancholic’s inability to make sense of life’s tragedies, large and small. He teeters on the emotional seesaw of those extremes in his latest adventure, which concerns the murder of a pharmaceutical salesman, who is found with his zipper open but with no evidence of recent sexual activity. Montalbano is an intuitive sleuth, but, like Inspector Adamsberg in Fred Vargas’ series set in France, his instincts often lead him astray. So it goes here, as Montalbano vacillates between suspecting a crime of passion involving either the victim’s sister or his former lover (to whom Salvo is disconcertingly attracted) or opting for the more traditional explanation of a Mafia hit (in which the unzipped body was merely a ruse). Solutions are found, of course, but resolution proves elusive as Montalbano muses on our myriad human frailties and how they so often lead to calamity. A must for fans of Donna Leon’s similarly meditative Guido Brunetti. --Bill Ott

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Macmillan Books India
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0330458116
• ISBN 13: 9780330458115
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288