August Heat: An Inspector Montalbano Mystery
by Andrea Camilleri
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Book Reviews of August Heat: An Inspector Montalbano Mystery
Book Review: Is Italy/Sicily Really this Corrupt?
Summary: 4 Stars
For anyone who has read Camilleri's other novels, they know how difficult it is to get anything done in Italy without greasing the wheels. This is also reinforced by the novels of Michael Dibdin (Aurelio Zen) and Donna Leon (Commissario Guido Brunetti). There is an almost pall that wafts over the country that has lingered since the end of World War 2 and the end of the Fascist state in 1945. The corruption of the State and the acceptance by most Italians says much for the people and their take on life. Much like France, the Italians look backwards to find their future.
When friends of Livia rent a house near Vigata for a vacation, they face all kinds of problems including an infestation of spiders and cockroaches. The problem he finds is that their is another floor to the building underground. Italians will build houses that are illegal and then wait for a government amnesty. It happens so often that people see no reason to follow the rules knowing that in the near future, all will be forgiven. Even in this time of computers, the notice that is hung on the building, that it is illegal is full of stamps, ribbons and signatures that Italians revel in.
The story itself is quite weak, but I give it four stars for style and not content. At one point Fazio and Montalbano laugh that the situation they are in would make a good TV show, NO it wouldn't. I think that Signore Camilleri is getting bored with writing the series but at 84 he doesn't have a lot else to do so he keeps writing. Maybe he should get a co-author. The ending is not only unnecessary but meaningless.
Zeb Kantrowitz
Book Review: Summer heat dulls inspector's wits
Summary: 3 Stars
I've read a couple of the Inspector Montalbano series and enjoyed them fairly well. I enjoyed this one too but the ending was a disappointment.
It's August in Sicily and Montalbano rents a villa for his girlfriend's friend who has an obnoxious three-year-old. When the kid goes missing, Montalbano manages to discover that there's a secret lower level to the house (built to avoid Italian taxes or evade building regulations). The boy has stumbled in there and become trapped. While rescuing him, the inspector notices a chest. He opens it and discovers a corpse -- a young, beautiful girl who went missing several years before.
Up to this point, the book has whizzed along, propeled by the characters and Montalbano's sharp wits. But now it loses steam. Montalbano's girlfriend, Livia, quarrels with him and leaves town; the August heat intensifies, apparently dulling the inspector's wits and the plot starts to become less believable. I won't say more to avoid giving things away.
There's quite a lot to enjoy in this book. I love the descriptions of the meals the inspector ingests -- they make me want to catch the next plane to Italy. I also like the author's cynical yet realistic description of corruption and Italian bureaucracy. I like the sharp interplay of the police with the prosecutor and the forensics lab. But I was disappointed in the way the author tied it all up to produce an ending high on melodrama and low on realism.
Book Review: Too Hot Not to Cool Down?
Summary: 1 Stars
Something dire has happened in Montelusa: Montalbano finds himself fighting for his survival. How will he escape this flat-footed, contrived plot and live to fight another day? All the majesterial depths of the other Montalbano books, treasured for the subtlties of plotting, the corrosive political issues raised, the well-rounded main characters, and set against that enchanted landscape, which have made Camillieri the biggest selling Sicilian writer since Giuseppi Tomasi di Lampedusa, have been kidnapped, tortured and cruelly slain.
Be prepared for utter disappointment.
You know an author is in trouble when he starts playing for cheap laughs. By wheeling the inept Catarella to centre stage in this plodding novel, with his repeating 'poisonally in poison' over and over again until I thought I'd weep, the irksomeness of what was originally a brilliant comic turn (and cleverly translated by Sartarelli into Brooklynese)took it's toll and I began to wonder if this book was actually written by Camilieri himself poisonally in poison.
Could August Heat have been computer generated? It has the feel of something untouched by human hands and certainly not by the heart.
If you can bear not reading this new Montalbano but long for more of the great Camillieri, I suggest you go back and re-read his earlier and wonderfully rich books instead.
Book Review: THE HEAT IS ON
Summary: 4 Stars
In this mystery the venerable A. Camilleri stuck his photo right up front, instead of in the back. So you have to get past an old, paunchy man( with a coffin nail dangling from his lip) guarding the novel like Cerberus guards Hades. I guess this is someones idea of attractive. Anyway, we find our hero aging in the Sicilian summer heat. His formidable deductive powers are slipping. His relationship with his long-time girlfriend Livia is on the rocks. The August heat is so oppressive Montabalno's clothes stick to his back like his shoes stick to the hot pavement. This is as close as I can get to Sicily without getting a passport. As usual Camilleri adroitly captures the essence of maffiosi, bureaucratic layers of overlapping police jurisdictions, serpentine inter-twining of political and maffia corruption.
The plot hums along nicely. Montabalno, the aging protaginist, is tempted by big lunches and a young hottie. He gives in to seduction by a young siren and his usual wolfish appetite for food.
Alas, he comes to realize he is an old fool who has been used; and, his deductive powers are slipping. This plot rings true.
Once again I have enjoyed my brief soujourn to Sicily sans the 12 hour flight.
Book Review: downstairs house
Summary: 4 Stars
This Camilleri mystery may not be the place to start for those just arriving on the scene because the investigation is a darker one, involving a murdered adolescent, and because Montalbano himself makes some decisions that serial readers will consider surprising but newer readers may not appreciate as shockingly anomalous. Camilleri does not disappoint. We readers continue our education in Sicilian manners and mannerisms, this time with an emphasis on building codes and almost unendurable summer heat. Montalbano enjoys a couple of good meals, defies bureaucracy, drinks whisky, repeatedly swims into the ever more polluted sea, and, in spite of his best intentions, continues to flounder in his romantic life with long-time love Livia. The murder case itself is unraveled precipitously close to the conclusion of the book but there is further excitement at the end here since the ramifications of Inspector Montalbano's behavior, only in part attributable to his aging, must certainly be dealt with in the next account of this wholly pleasing series.