Review: THE SNACK THIEF, Andrea Camilleri

• 
   This edition read on my Kindle (AmazonAU)
  
• Translated by Stephen Sartarelli 
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B006NV9C4K
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador, Publication date ‏ : ‎ 1 October 2005
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1743291474
• Book 3 of 28 ‏ : ‎ Inspector Montalbano Mysteries 

Synopsis (AmazonAU)

The third novel in Camilleri's savagely witty and hauntingly atmospheric Sicilian mystery series featuring Inspector Montalbano.

Never has Inspector Montalbano's character - a unique blend of humor, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food - been more compelling than in Andrea Camilleri's third Montalbano novel, The Snack Thief.

When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Inspector Montalbano suspects a link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school children's mid-morning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief's life - as well as Montalbano's - is endangered when the inspector exposes a viper's nest of government corruption and international intrigue.

My Take

I have only read a couple of novels by this highly rated Italian author. This one I am reading for discussion with my U3A Crime Fiction Reading Group.

Inspector Montalbano is a fascinating and vivid character, an unusual detective, a man with a rough exterior and a tender interior. The plot combines the discovery of a local murder with the death of a trawlerman off the coast of Sicily in international waters. 

The human side of Montalbano gets an outing too as he and his girl friend become involved in creating an instant family. 

My rating: 4.5

I've also read

• 4.5, AUGUST HEAT - #10
• 4.2, ROUNDING THE MARK - #7

Review: THE SNACK THIEF, Andrea Camilleri

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
  
• File Size: 520 KB
• Print Length: 308 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0330492977
• Publisher: Picador; New Ed edition (October 1, 2005)
• Sold by: Macmillan
• Language: English, translated from Italian by Stephen Sartarelli.
• ASIN: B006NV9C4K

Synopsis (Amazon)

The third novel in Camilleri's savagely witty and hauntingly atmospheric Sicilian mystery series featuring Inspector Montalbano.

Never has Inspector Montalbano's character-a unique blend of humour, cynicism, compassion, earthiness, and love of good food-been more compelling than in The Snack Thief.

When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily's coast, only Inspector Montalbano suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished house cleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son steals other school children's mid-morning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief's life-as well as Montalbano's-is endangered when the inspector exposes a viper's nest of government corruption and international intrigue.

My Take

It is fascinating to watch the disparate strands of this novel come together. In many ways Inspector Montalbano is a maverick, a very cool investigator, whose instinct for the truth is remarkable.

Courageous in many ways connected to his job, Montalbano is unable to face his father's impending death.

There is a lot of black humor in THE SNACK THIEF but a lot of compassion too. An underlying all, Montalbano's love of good food, resulting mouth watering recipes.

My rating: 4.3

I've also reviewed
4.5, AUGUST HEAT
4.2, ROUNDING THE MARK

Review: ROUNDING THE MARK, Andrea Camilleri - audio book

• Published 2010
• translated from Italian by Stephen Sartarelli
• audio version from Blackstone Audio
• Narrated by Grover Gardner
• Length: approximately 6 hours
• #7 in the the Salvo Montalbano series
• Source: my local library

Synopsis (Amazon)

In Rounding the Mark, Inspector Montalbano discovers a corpse while swimming along the Sicilian shore. His pursuit of the cause of death intersects with the inquiry into a hit-and-run accident that claimed the life of a young boy who may have been victimized by human traffickers.

The buying and selling of immigrant children, for slave labor, sex, and as a source of illegal organ transplants, is part of the evil underside of the opening of Europe's borders. That, combined with frustration with his department's repressive handling of security for the G8 summit in Genoa and the corruption among his superiors and the politicians behind them, makes setting anything right seem like an exercise in futility.

Montalbano alternates between despair and steely resolve. When he realizes that he may have inadvertently aided the boy's victimizers, his internal turmoil intensifies.

My Take

This novel is a strange mixture of the humorous and the serious. The serious comes from two themes: corruption in the Italian police force particularly at the upper levels, and the increasing trade in human trafficking. At least twice, in the face of his inability to stop the growth in either of these two issues, Montalbano reaches a point of resignation.

He takes delight in small victories though like the solving of mysteries such as identity of the floating corpse that he bumps into on his morning swim. The humour is bound up in Montalbano's personality and the actions he takes such as his decision to tow the corpse to shore using his own swimming trunks, and his tendency to neigh like a horse when he is delighted.

Montalbano comes through as an intuitive detective seeing patterns and connections where others don't, and possessing an ability to replay and freeze-frame events in his own mind, looking for things that don't fit.

The narration by Grover Gardner took some getting used to. He used a variety of Bronx intonations for members of Montalbano's team. It was almost enough to put me off right at the beginning.

My rating: 4.2

Other reviews to check

• Crime Segments
• EuroCrime (Sunnie Gill)

I've also reviewed AUGUST HEAT
I have a number of the titles sitting on my shelves and on my Kindle and really must make the effort to catch up with Salvo Montalbano more.

Review: AUGUST HEAT, Andrea Camilleri

Penguin Books 2009
Originally published in 2006 as LA VAMPA D'AGOSTO
Translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli
An Inspector Montalbano Mystery
ISBN 978-0-14-311405-5
277 pages

August is not the month to be working in Sicily. The heat is oppressive, sweat-drenching, and, if you have no airconditioning, almost unbearable. Inspector Salva Montalbano had intended to leave Vigata to spend the holiday season with his girlfriend Livia, somewhere cooler.

When Salva has to work after all, Livia decides to rent a house by the sea near Vigata. She brings the family of her dearest friend with her. The house has been a summer rental for the past six years ever since its German owner died and his stepson mysteriously disappeared.

The troubles at the beachside house begin on the morning of the third day with an invasion of an army of  black cockroaches. On the fifth day it is mice, and then on the eighth, spiders. On the eleventh day 3 year old Bruno, the son of Livia's friends, disappears. Montalbano discovers that he has slipped down a narrow shaft leading under the house. In rescuing Bruno, Montalbano uncovers a six-year old murder.

AUGUST HEAT is one of those novels where the weather, the almost unrelenting and palpable heat, becomes one of the cast of characters. Livia and her friends leave after the discovery of the body and so Montalbano doesn't even have her as a distraction.

Reconstructing events that are dead cold is never easy. People's memories are less than precise, witnesses are no longer available, and murderers cover their tracks. Montalbano's peeling back the layers is what makes AUGUST HEAT good reading.

It seems that in the original Italian Camilleri attempted to reproduce the sounds of speech of Montalbano's assistant Catarella. The results of the translation into English are almost comic, and had me reading Catarella's utterances very carefully.
"Catarella? Montalbano here"
"I already rec'nize ya inasmuch as yer voice is all yours, Chief."

AUGUST HEAT is #10 in Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series. I have only read one or two others, but was able to enjoy this title almost as a stand-alone.

My rating 4.5

AUGUST HEAT has been shortlisted for the for the 2010 CWA International Dagger.
Other reviews to check: Crime Scraps, Reactions to Reading, Euro Crime