Inspector Montalbano #7

Rounding the Mark - Andrea Camilleri

In this 2003 mystery, Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano and his band of dedicated detectives return in this seventh book of the celebrated series.

This story opens with Salvo going through an existential crisis. He’s feeling his years. He’s concerned that his focus and concentration aren’t what they were, that he’s losing the powerful memory a detective needs. He ponders whether he should quit his job on the force.

In the middle of this brooding, he goes for a swim in the sea. Sure enough, what never happened to him before happens - he gets exhausted and has to clutch at a lucky plank to avoid drowning. While he is floating in the water, he collides with an unpleasant something: a body half decomposed. This suspends his desire to resign as he swings his attention to discovering who the “corpse that went swimming” was.

Camilleri's books often have a strong social consciousness, with an eye on inevitable socio-economic changes in Italian society, political upheaval, income inequality, and corruption. Here immigration is touched with a depth and a rawness that had never been done before in the series. Camilleri  shows how xenophobic people can be, especially islanders with a mentality characterized by narrow-mindedness, ignorance of the mainland and the world, and outright hostility towards any outsider, even from a village five miles away.

As usual, Salvo is a sparrow that sprinkles drops of water on a burning forest. These big issues hurt him because he hates injustice and stupidity. That's why this installment in the series is so enjoyable. It’s full of funny moments, which make the unpleasant somethings easier to take.

The Shape of Water	The Dance of the Seagull
The Terra-Cotta Dog	Treasure Hunt
3 The Snack Thief (2003)	17 Angelica's Smile (2013)
Voice of the Violin	Game of Mirrors
5 The Excursion To Tindari (2005)	A Beam of Light
The Smell of the Night	aka Blade of Light
aka The Scent of the Night	20 A Voice in the Night (2016)
Rounding the Mark	A Nest of Vipers
The Patience of the Spider	22 The Pyramid of Mud (2018)
The Paper Moon	23 The Overnight Kidnapper (2019)
August Heat	24 The Other End of the Line (2019)
The Wings of the Sphinx	25 The Safety Net (2020)
The Track of Sand	26 The Sicilian Method (2020)
The Potter's Field	27 The Cook of the Halcyon (2021)
The Age of Doubt	28 Riccardino (2021)