The Montalbano Series
Beginning with The Shape of Water in 1994, Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series follows Salvo Montalbano, a middle aged Sicilian police inspector working in the fictional seaside town of Vigata. Across more than two dozen novels and several story collections, Montalbano investigates murders, kidnappings, and frauds that almost always lead him into the worlds of the Mafia, corrupt local officials, and the strange tides of immigration touching modern Sicily. The mysteries are tightly plotted, but the books are equally about food, friendship, his fraught relationship with his northern girlfriend Livia, and the rhythms of an island that Camilleri rendered in a salty mix of standard Italian and Sicilian dialect. Stephen Sartarelli's English translations preserve much of the flavor. The series became a long running RAI television production starring Luca Zingaretti, and Camilleri wrote new novels almost annually until his death in 2019.
What you might want to know about The Montalbano Series
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Andrea Camilleri's beloved Sicilian detective series following Inspector Salvo Montalbano in the fictional town of Vigata.
It helps for the personal threads, but each mystery is self contained and most readers start with The Shape of Water or The Terra Cotta Dog.
Quite faithful, though the books are denser in food, dialect, and political satire than the screen version.
The Montalbano Series was written by Andrea Camilleri.
The Montalbano Series is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
