The Terracotta Dog (1996)

Camillleri's second Montalbano novel entranced me. I appreciate the social and political commentary woven through these stories but what I really enjoyed in this one was the descriptions of Sicilian cooking. I wanted to put the book down and go cook several times, but the narrative and characters carried me along. Still, I think I'm cooking Italian tonight... ( )

Yeaaaaah... I didn't enjoy this very much. It was entertaining and Montalbano is fun to watch, but I found myself quite irritable the whole way through. In fact, the episode filmed around this was much more enjoyable. ( )

A mafia figure wanted for three murders selects Inspector Montalbano to arrest him. About the same time the staged arrest is taking place, a delivery truck arrives early to a convenience store, but the store is robbed of the shipment overnight. When officials search a cave, Montalbano finds another cave behind it with two long dead corpses arranged in what appears to be a ritualistic fashion with a terracotta dog watching over them. I listened to the audio version narrated by Grover Gardner. Although I had trouble staying focused when I was distracted by other things, it was a complex mystery that kept me wanting to know more about the distant mystery. I'm not a huge fan of mafia involvement or espionage in my novels, but this one had enough in the historical mystery to keep my attention. I would prefer for the characters to clean up their language a bit and for there to be less graphic description of some things, but all in all this was an entertaining audio book. ( )

audiobook, audible.com, Grover Gardner, Inspector Montalbano ( )

Uno dei migliori Montalbano. Ma che parlamm'a fa'? E' uno dei pochissimi serial che piace sempre ritrovare. Perché la storia poliziesca, gialla, nera, come vogliamo definirla, c'è sempre. Forte, coerente, intrigante. Sono romanzi, questi di Camilleri, che ti fanno venir voglia di girare la pagina per sapere come va a finire, ma al contempo ci stai dentro piacevolmente, in compagnia di vecchi amici. Non è da tutti. ( )