Manuel,
I red 4 mystery novels from the Montalbano series by
Camilleri, but I hesitated to open a thread as I was not too
sure about the existence of English translations.
The Montalbano series is not from the HB stable, but he's
certainly from the noirish borderline of the genre. Camilleri
uses extensively whodunits type of intrigues, but everything
else around it often takes a noirish background in his
novels: mafia, police, Montalbano moods...etc. These novels
are very popular in Italy, and Camilleri started to be very
well known and successful in France since a few of
years.
He's an experienced writer (in his early seventies now I
think) mainly acclaimed for his plays and historical novels
in Italy before his Montalbano series, series that he started
not so long ago (so, being already rather old). As you may
already know, he choose the name of Montalbano as a homage to
the Spanish author Manuel Vasquez Montalban, father of the
Pepe Carvalho series, author that Camilleri admires a
lot.
IMO he's a very good writer and it shows in the Montalbano
series, wherein the dialog is superb and the story often
bears an acute sense of rhythm and construction rarely seen
in that type of novels. Of course when I discovered he was a
playwright, I understood better why the quality of the dialog
was high. Indeed Sicily plays a great role in these books,
with a good feeling of the provincial daily life there, given
by some "sketches" or details of the relations between some
characters. It was not written in pure Italian, but parts of
the dialog carry Sicilian dialect, even between Montalbano
and his police assistants (I don't know if the English
translation tried to convey something similar).
And... there is a kind of "magic" with his style of writing,
making that the reading of most of the Montalbano novels
captures your full attention and gives you a feeling of
fulfilment (nothing to do with the plot that can be anyway
ending with a negative tone...).
I sincerely hope he will not produce too much for the
Montalbano series and will keep his quality of writing, which
is IMO what does the difference.
PS: 'The Shape of Water'- (La forma dell'acqua - 1994) is the
first novel of the Montalbano series. Camilleri also produced
a book made of shorts with Montalbano, besides the series of
novels.
E.Borgers HARD-BOILED MYSTERIES http://www.geocities.com/Athens/6384
At 11:32 28-01-03 -0500, you wrote:
>I just finished two books by Andrea Camilleri--The
Shape of Water and The
Terra-Cotta Dog. I didn't know anything about this author
before I started reading the books (recommended by an
employee of the local mystery book store). I enjoyed them,
especially the Terra-Cotta Dog, which hooked me immediately
with the opening riff: Inspector Montalbano meets Tano "the
Greek", an assassin from the old school. I've never been to
Sicily, but the books are loaded with details about Sicilian
life, and it rang true for me--so I'm wondering what others
think about these books and the author. Not hard enough for
this crowd?
>
>Manuel Ramos
>MOONY'S ROAD TO HELL (2002)
>BROWN-ON-BROWN (2003)
>www.manuelramos.com
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