Inspector Montalbano #15

The Dance of the Seagull – Andrea Camilleri

A police procedural created around a serious hero has a familiar setting, recurring characters, and sometimes a set menu of themes important to the writer. But the longer the series runs, the more difficult it is for the writer to introduce elements of novelty and surprise.

Camilleri doesn't quite manage to pull rabbits out of his hat in this outing though the story is intense. Inspector Salvo Montalbano’s second in command Giuseppe Fazio risks his life to investigate, without telling any police colleagues, a smuggling ring at the port of Vigata (Sicily). More hardboiled in tone than usual, Camilleri bases the criminal enterprise on the unlikely cooperation of two antagonistic groups. The least successful scene is a lapse of taste in which Montalbano compels nurse Angela to reveal the nature of the hold the gangsters have on her. As often happens in mysteries and thrillers, the ending seems a bit rushed and far-fetched.

Having read this series since 2015, I wonder if I, as a serial reader, now bring to the books an attitude that modifies the standard plot each time in my own imagination, depending on my mood, my capacity for openness. I’m looking for the usual reassuring and ritual points of reference (“Chief, Chief!”) or I might be wanting Camilleri the mystery writer to stand aside for Camilleri the novelist to subvert the typical plot and narrative scheme of a series mystery. And indeed here Camilleri goes meta about Montalbano. At the beginning Salvo and Livia are comparing his “actual” looks to the actor that plays the TV Montalbano.

One relatable and recurring theme in the Montalbano books is that as his 57 years have passed, Montalbano is dealing with getting old. As happens to some people as they age, Montalbano becomes more impressionable and his rowdy emotions come closer to the surface. The novel opens with his ending up in the Slough of Despond by witnessing the drama of a dying seagull dancing on the beach near his Marinella house, just as later in the novel envisioning the cruel spectacle of a murder done by coldblooded mafia killers reduces him to a rag. Despite this, he does not lose either his shrewdness or his determination, and uses his rationality and passion both in an investigation that involves the usual brutes, thus making them vulnerable for once and putting them in public display.

In the 28 mysteries starting Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Camilleri usually manages to keep stories fresh without distorting the expected elements of the saga of its police station. In this outing is he is not so successful in achieving something original, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop reading this series.