The Snack Thief by
Andrea Camilleri
pbk out January 05
(Picador)
at £6.99
The third and most satisfying of the Inspector Montalbano mysteries so far published
in English. In this one, Montalbano is happy to let his deputy Mimì Augello
investigate the off-shore shooting of a Tunisian worker on an Italian fishing boat. The
possibility, for instance, that the "international repercussions" of the incident might
prove embarassing to his rival is too good to miss. Instead Montalbano prefers to
investigate the purely local implications of the discovery, in a lift, of the body of
Signore Lapècora, a retired businessman once in import/export. Happy that is, until
Montalbano discovers that Livia, Montalbano's long-suffering girlfriend, has a soft
spot for deputy Augello and that Lapècora's Tunisian mistress has disappeared,
leaving behind a bank book worth (pre-Euro) five hundred million lire.
Now aged close to 80, Camilleri turned late to writing, to crime fiction even
later. As mentors Christie and Innes are as likely as Sciascia and, not
uncoincidentally, Montalbán. Camilleri's books about Salvo Montalbano however are
truly unique. Here an intriguing plot spirals from local incident to political hot potato,
kicked along in typical fashion by a multitude of brisk, often knockabout scenes.
Characters come and go with alarming rapidity (familiarity with previous books is
advisable) and the story advances with great pace and panache.
The whole is held together by the gathering splendour of the irrepressible
Montalbano himself. A distant Sicilian cousin of Joyce Porter's Wilfred Dover, he is
crafty, profane, short-tempered, railing against his more orthodox colleagues,
gourmandising (always open to a little culinary blackmail) and intent on every little
wrinkle in his investigation (at one point he calls for a copy of le Carré's early Smiley
novel Call for the Dead to assist his deductive powers). Finally however, he is both
moral and chivalrous. And all the while the writer and his hero cast an acerbic eye on
both the hypocrisies and realities of Sicilian society ("Did something happen to my
husband?", asks the widow Lapècora, for "There is no Sicilian woman alive, of any
class, aristocrat or peasant, who, after her fiftieth birthday, isn't always expecting the
worst.")
Stephen Sartarelli's translation gets more comfortable with every book, my only
doubt his rendering of Montalbano's profanity in ripe Hollywood four-letter mode
(though he favours, thank goodness, the English 'arse over the American 'ass'). And
as usual the translator adds four or five pages of valuable explanatory notes.
A hugely entertaining and often enlightening package. Invest.
The Snack Thief by
Andrea Camilleri
