"August Heat", Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano mystery series has been mentioned here before. "August Heat" is the latest in the series to be translated into English, just published last month. Last night it came to the rescue.

To explain, after dinner last night I rechecked the last post here for any typos or grammatical errors which are almost always there to be found after the initial spontaneous writing. Looking at recent posts as well, what became clear was more of an obsession than usual with opinions about the financial markets. Give it a break was the thought that came. So I sat down with "The Ascent of Money", midway through this recent book by historian Niall Ferguson, put my feet up and began to read and relax. Wrong book at that moment, the relaxation did not come and the market obsession intensified in an unpleasant way. "August Heat" had arrived from Amazon the day before. Thank God.

Camilleri writes with an easy flowing and wry touch. His translator must be excellent but the few bumps in the prose are likely accounted for by a challenge in recreating the vernacular. The story lines, the mysteries, are written at a pace that keeps the attention focused and this reader turning the pages. There is always a second story line that is coincident with the mystery and that is the thoughts of a man in his mid-fifties, Inspector Montalbano, and his interior monologue about aging. "August Heat" was no exception to these observations. In fact, it was perhaps the best of the series, or at least it seemed that way last night as I stayed engaged until the end. What a relief.