The Dance of the Seagull – Andrea Camilleri
A police procedural, like a well-worn Sicilian trattoria, thrives on familiarity: the same harbor, the same voices, the same ritual gestures. But longevity breeds a peculiar challenge - how to keep the wine from turning flat. In his latest outing, Andrea Camilleri doesn’t quite conjure rabbits from the hat, though the story hums with tension.
Giuseppe Fazio, Montalbano’s taciturn lieutenant, goes semi-undercover, burrowing into a smuggling ring at Vigata’s port. The plot leans hardboiled, its criminal machinery powered by an improbable alliance of sworn enemies. A single scene - a coercive exchange with a nurse - lands with a thud, a lapse of taste in an otherwise taut narrative. And, as often in thrillers, the ending sprints past plausibility.
After a decade of reading these novels, I wonder if the series now exists partly in my imagination - its cadences, its comforting refrains (“Chief, Chief!”) mingling with my own moods. Sometimes I crave Camilleri the craftsman of puzzles; sometimes Camilleri the sly metafictionist. Here, he tips his hand: Salvo and Livia debate whether the TV actor resembles the “real” inspector, a wink across the fourth wall.
But the most resonant theme is age. At fifty-seven, Montalbano feels the undertow of time. His emotions, once buttoned-down, surge closer to the surface. The book opens with a dying seagull staggering on the beach - a tableau that pitches him into melancholy - and closes with a murder so brutal it leaves him gutted. Yet his shrewdness endures; reason and passion still fuse in the hunt, exposing the usual brutes to daylight.
Across twenty-eight novels, Camilleri has kept the series supple without betraying its essence. This time, originality falters. Still, I’ll keep reading. Because in Vigata, even predictability tastes of salt and sun - and of something like home.
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