Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship with Livia is once again on the rocks, and, acutely aware of his age, he is beginning to grow weary of the endless violence he encounters. Then a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off, and there is no hint of her identity except a tattoo of a sphinx moth. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls, all victims of the underworld sex trade, who have been rescued from the Mafia night-club circuit by a prominent Catholic charity. The problem is that Montalbano's inquiries elicit an outcry from the Church--and the three other girls are all missing.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Happily, Grover Gardner eschews even a hint of an Italian accent in narrating the 11th installment of this series celebrating the life, loves, and investigations of the charmingly eccentric Sicilian Insp. Salvo Montalbano. Nearly every word in this comfortable but not cozy novel identifies its geographical setting, particularly the details of its food, scenery, characters, and, yes, crimes. In the case of the latter, it's what looks like a faux kidnapping and a murder that has the outspoken detective investigating a Catholic charity supposed to be saving the souls and bodies of beautiful young women from the wicked ways of local Mafia night clubs. Along with his avoidance of stereotypes and unfortunate accents, Gardner does quite well by the characters, from the weary but unstoppable Montalbano to his backup crew of memorable cops and the angry, offended, officious, and, in rare instances, grateful people with whom he has to deal. With the exception of a desk cop who's a bit too thick to be believed, these are three-dimensional, human creations, and Gardner treats them as such. A Penguin paperback (Reviews, Nov. 16). (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Booklist
It should come as no surprise to fans of Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano series that the Sicilian inspector’s brow is now furrowed over the prospect of growing old. That’s hardly his only source of melancholy, though. There’s always plenty of storm clouds on the ever-brooding Salvo’s horizon, both personal (his foundering relationship with girlfriend Livia) and professional (the ubiquitous violence he encounters in his job and throughout society). All those forces come together here, when Salvo must solve the case of a young woman shot in the face, with only a tattoo as a clue to her identity. The tattoo’s trail leads to the sex trade and to three Eastern European women brought to Italy to work as dancers. Were the women rescued by a prominent Catholic charity, or is the charity a front for an even larger scam? Naturally, in the course of sorting that out, Salvo encounters resistance from the church and his bosses, as well as managing to endanger plans for a getaway with Livia—all of which cause more gray hairs to sprout. Camilleri’s sure hand with tragicomedy remains the distinguishing feature of this always entertaining series. --Bill Ott
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
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More About the Author
Andrea Camilleri is the author of the spectacularly successful Montalbano mystery series and many other novels set in nineteenth-century Sicily. His Montalbano novels have been made into an Italian TV series.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Va bene!,
By
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This review is from: The Wings of the Sphinx (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) (Paperback)
Inspector Silvio Montalbano is feeling every one of his fifty-six years. In this eleventh installment in the Inspector Montalbano series, author Andrea Camilleri neither disappoints nor dazzles, instead turning in the journeyman performance expected. If anything, Montalbano, "meteoropathic" (he is profoundly influenced by the weather) inspector in Vigata, a fictional town in Siciliy, goes through his paces: his extravagant lunches at Enzo's, his tortuous conversations with Catarella, the desk sergeant who is the master of the malaprop, his walk to the end of the jetty to contemplate life, his whiskies on his veranda, his perplexing love-life with long time paramour Livia...it's all here. Yet fresh, nuanced.
Montalbano actually flees the scene of the crime that launches this book, the discovery of the body of a young woman, shot in the face and discarded in the city dump, naked. He can no longer deal with death visited upon the young. He is assailed, as are we all, with television's daily diet of death and dismemberment, war and violence visited on young and old. Montalbano still performs his amazing leaps of logic, his finely honed intuition often delivering the necessary bridge needed to solve a crime or determine a motive, yet in this book he leaves much of the work to his more-than-capable assistants, Mimi Augello and Fazio. His investigation wanders through a Catholic charity, private homes, the remains of a burned-out retail business, and prison. As always, Camilleri creates a sense of place and sets it firmly in time. Through Montalbano he takes his obligatory swipes at Silvio Berlusconi, the web of the powerful who seem to trample through every investigation, and the Sicilian bureaucracy, While the series isn't great literature, it is a great series. Camilleri keeps his characters fresh, building on them in each subsequent work. You feel what Montalbano feels, the frustration, the powerlessness, the emotions of growing older and wiser but no less effective against the powers that be. When we visited Italy a couple of years ago I wanted to purchase the first book in the series, The Shape of Water (La forma dell' acqua) in Italian. When I walked into a bookstore in Rome and asked for the title, the clerk beamed and shouted "Mafia! Mafia!" Camilleri's a well-known and respected writer in Italy, with the series turned into a television program.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Insults & insights in Sicily,
By
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This review is from: The Wings of the Sphinx (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) (Paperback)
I pounce on any new Montalbano mystery, and have to fight my husband to keep possession. Every book is a treat. The setting is Sicily, where we expect plenty of scandals and skullduggery - and Camilleri delivers.
In this book, Inspector Montalbano at 56 is having a crisis with his long-distance girlfriend Livia, while carrying on his usual lifestyle. He's consuming huge quantities of fabulous Sicilian food, making obscene wisecracks to superiors and stowing half-smoked cigarettes in his burnt-out jacket pocket. He's also digging too deeply into a case that's sure to bring trouble. A twenty-something woman has been found naked in an illegal dump with her face shot off. The main clue to her identity is the Sphinx moth tattooed on her shoulder blade. Montalbano eventually connects the victim, who is Russian, to an association called Benevolence that help young women imported from other countries escape prostitution. Montalbano suspects that Benevolence is hiding bad things behind a good cause. This is a political hot potato, since Benevolence naturally enough has attracted a lot of support from powerful people. But it's not so much the crimes and their solutions that make Camilleri great fun to read. It's the wacky atmosphere in the police station, with Montalbano at war with the system and his desk sergeant Catarella garbling every phone message and mangling every name. And it's the drama and colorful language that seem to surround every human interaction. Montalbano covers a lot of ground in his investigations, despite the fact that the government can't afford gasoline for the squad cars. Camilleri delights in portraying scandalous goings-on in Sicily. Montalbano fans who like to reconstruct the inspector's favorite dishes will find detailed and daunting instructions for making 'mpanata di maiali on page 159. I'd suggest that the Montalbano mysteries be consumed entire and in order for the fullest enjoyment.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
One of best in the Salvo Montalbano series,
By Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Wings of the Sphinx (Inspector Montalbano Mysteries) (Paperback)
Inspector Salvo Montalbano knows his territory--the Sicilian town of Vigata and environs--like the back of his hand, so when criminal activity occurs, he usually has some idea of who might be involved and why. In "The Wings of the Sphinx," another "slaughter of the innocent" has occurred--a beautiful young woman has been shot and her body discarded on a garbage heap. The increasingly world-weary Montalbano finds the crime almost more than he can stomach and starts again to consider retirement from the police. His dark mood is amplified by a crisis in his relationship with long-time girlfriend Livia--a relationship that has been demanding some kind of definition for some time.
Eventually, Montalbano sorts through the professional challenges, uncovering some of the usual venal conspiring amongst leaders of the community, as well as more banal personal failings by the town's lesser lights. As always, author Camilleri gives the reader an insightful exposition of the good and bad in his native Sicily, but manages to end his story on the positive side of the human ledger. Along the way, there is plenty of cynicism, bombast, humor, serious dining on Sicilian cuisine and an inventive and serpentine story line. Great reading. Bring on the next one.
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