The award-winning author of the Inspector Montalbano series explores the political intrigue of seventeenth-century Sicily in this novel based on true events. Sicily, 1677. Just before his death, the viceroy of Spanish-controlled Sicily names his wife Doña Eleonora as his successor. The Holy Royal Council is scandalized by the thought of a woman running the government, and its corrupt councilors will do everything in their power to make her a viceroy...

Florence, 1966. The rain is never-ending. When a young boy vanishes on his way home from school the police fear the worst, and Inspector Bordelli begins an increasingly desperate investigation. Then the flood hits. During the night of November 4th, the swollen River Arno, already lapping the arches of the Ponte Vecchio, breaks its banks and overwhelms the city. Streets become rushing torrents, the force of the water sweeping away cars and trees,...

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 only a tattoo of a sphinx moth giving any hint of her identity. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls—all victims of the underworld sex trade—who have been...

On a gloomy morning in Vigàta, a call from Fazio rouses Inspector Montalbano from a nightmare. A man called Giugiù Nicotra has been found dead in the skeletal workings of a construction site--a place now entombed by a sea of mud from recent days of rain and floods. Shot in the back, he had fled into a water supply system tunnel. The investigation gets off to a slow start, but all the evidence points to the world of construction and public contracts,...

While swimming along the Sicilian shore, Inspector Montalbano discovers a corpse. 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...

Witty and entertaining, the Montalbano novels by Andrea Camilleri—a master of the Italian detective story—have become favorites of mystery fans everywhere. In this latest installment, an unidentified corpse is found near Vigàta, a town known for its soil rich with potter's clay. Meanwhile, a woman reports the disappearance of her husband, a Colombian man with Sicilian origins who turns out to be related to a local mobster. Then Inspector Montalbano...

Inspector Salvatore Montalbano wakes from strange dreams to find a gruesomely bludgeoned horse carcass in front of his seaside home. When his men come to investigate, the carcass has disappeared, leaving only a trail in the sand. Then his home is ransacked, and the inspector is certain that the crimes are linked. As he negotiates both the glittering underworld of horseracing and the Mafia's connection to it, Montalbano is aided by his illiterate housekeeper,...

Set on the Sicilian coast, a collection of eight short stories featuring the young Inspector Montalbano. In 1980s Vigàta, a restless Inspector Montalbano brings his brash yet clear-sighted investigative style to eight enthralling cases. Death at Sea finds the detective seeking to bring justice to crimes -- from those involving jilted lovers and deadly family affairs to an encounter featuring the assassination attempt against the Pope to murders in...