Good mystery, but a bit gruesome in parts. I love the Montalbano series. It has never been this graphic before. I hope this is a one off for that. I appreciate the humor as well as the mystery. Great narrator, too!

Inspector Montalbano is called to a wild scene where an elderly, recluse brother and sister are firing weapons. Led by Montalbano, they are captured, but a blow-up, mutilated sex doll becomes a media sensation. Compounding the craziness, another identical doll is found in a dumpster and Montalbano is drawn into a treasure hunt by an unknown person, leading him on a chase for prey. When a beautiful, blond 18-year old girl is kidnapped, Montalbano puts things together, barely surviving the denouement. ( )

Almost as funny as Salvo using his swimming shorts to bring in a dead body, here he gets involved with not one, but two inflated sex dolls. The bad guy here is really bad and Salvo is almost killed, but saved by the swift action of his friend Ingrid. ( )

Grim & Grisly, lacking Montalbano's usual sense of humor, I figured out early on "who done it" and why.

The cruelty in this book was disturbing.

Montalbano matches wits w/ a murderer who leads him on a long & twisted chase, calling it a "Treasure Hunt".

Psychological Thriller, which I did not like. ( )

Not every book in a long-running series such as this can be a winner, and Camilleri's Treasure Hunt is not one of his best. I found it jarring. After the incident in the elderly snipers' apartment, Montalbano has to deal with "homicide withdrawal," and this is when the book takes a turn toward slapstick comedy (which is often hilarious). My favorite switchboard operator, Catarella himself, also has several scenes. Then in the last hundred pages, the tone becomes dark as the plot concentrates on the author of the treasure hunt.

Treasure Hunt is definitely a marriage of total opposites, and like many marriages, it's not completely successful. However, it is to be enjoyed for its wonderful sense of humor and for the chance to watch Montalbano's mind at work. His intuition is phenomenal. (In addition, it has added to my store of colloquialisms: "having a few cats to comb" -- a Sicilian expression which means to have tedious, difficult, and useless chores to attend to. Love it!) ( )