Inpector Montalbano #16

Treasure Hunt – Andrea Camilleri

A bizarre story opens in a calm that has descended on the Vigata (Sicily) police station for days and days. Series hero police inspector Salvo Montalbano is perplexed and bored, wondering where all the petty crooks have gone, perhaps ashamed that all the bankers, corporations, and politicians are better at stealing than they are.

Brother Gregorio and sister Caterina Palmisano have been fervent Catholics from their early age in the Forties. While this is not unusual in Vigata in 2010, what is strange is that they have not left their apartment for several years. They have had no contact with the rest of the world until they post on their balcony railing a series of banners urging sinners to repent or face retribution. After a few days, since brother and sister detect no evidence of regular people changing their evil ways, they start shooting at random passers-by on the street.

Montalbano and his fellow cops show up and subdue the elderly shooters. Inside, the flat gives the distinct impression that madness lives here. It’s in a state of Dickensian squalor, a large room is full of crucifixes of all sizes, and on old Greg's bed lies an inflatable doll, torn, leaks fixed with various patches but without an eye.  

After a few days, another almost identical inflatable sex doll is found in a dumpster in Vigàta. Montalbano decides to take the two dolls home to think about them, triggering the inevitable comic scenes of misunderstandings that their presence generates in his housekeeper and cook Adelina and his friend Ingrid the Swede.

In the meantime Salvo begins to receive strange anonymous letters. These contain the instructions for a treasure hunt: riddles, tests to pass, places to discover. The commissioner is restless and creeped out but he feels something is wrong and he decides to play along.

The atmosphere is dark in this, the 16^th of 28 Montalbano full-length novels but it's readable and entertaining. Amazing that the author can write so many and still maintain the reader's interest.