The Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri

A disturbing puzzle is solved amid chaos and comedy

The Treasure Hunt is the 16th
in the Montalbano series

The story begins with Gregorio and Caterina, two elderly people who are brother and sister, reported to be shooting at the people in the piazza below their apartment to ‘punish them for their sins’.

News cameras later film Inspector Montalbano, with his gun in hand, scaling the building to try to capture the deranged pair. Afterwards, when order has been restored, he is hailed as a hero by everyone.

But a few days later, he starts to receive messages in bad verse from an anonymous person challenging him to take part in a treasure hunt.

While trying to work out who is sending the sinister poems, Montalbano also has to lead his men in a hunt to find a beautiful young woman who has been reported missing by her distraught father.

The reader joins Montalbano on the trail through the sunny Sicilian streets, where he meets some eccentric characters and constantly finds himself in hilarious situations.

And from the descriptions of dishes on the menu at Enzo’s trattoria, or the meals cooked by the Inspector’s housekeeper, Adelina, eaten on his terrace overlooking the beach, you can almost smell the Sicilian food that the inspector enjoys along the way.

But all the time the clock is ticking, as the officers race to find the missing woman before she comes to any harm, and the Inspector becomes concerned about the increasingly sinister clues for the treasure hunt that he keeps receiving.

Camilleri died in 2019. He is
buried in Rome's Non-Catholic
cemetery in Testaccio

Montalbano also has to put up with irate phone calls from his long-distance girlfriend, Livia, who is jealous of his friendship with a beautiful Swedish woman, Ingrid.

On top of this, there is interference from his boss, the Commissioner, and the mangled speech of his officer, Catarella, when he relays telephone messages to the Inspector, to contend with.

Only at the end of the book, when Montalbano has put himself at great risk to solve the disappearance of the young woman, does everything  fall into place and the shooting spree carried out by the elderly brother and sister finally make any sense.

Another great trip to Sicily in the company of Montalbano.

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Auntie Poldi and the Vineyards of Etna

Wine and murder mix in front of a smoking volcano

The second book by Mario Giordano
in his Auntie Poldi detective series

Auntie Poldi embarks on another murder investigation in this second book in the series, but the only clue she has to go on is the picture on a wine label.

According to her anonymous German nephew who narrates the story, Auntie Poldi knows a thing or two about wine and has a nose for a good one. This particular bottle of Sicilian wine was used as a murder weapon and so she also sniffs out a new case to investigate.

She goes to the vineyard where the wine was produced to see if she can find out anything that might link it to the murder and, after enthusiastically taking up the offer of sampling the vintage and having rather too much of it, she comes across a dead body among the vines on her way home.

So, Auntie Poldi is off on another adventure in sunny Sicily, where she has gone to see out her days with the intention of drinking herself to death while enjoying a sea view.

After being widowed, the glamorous 60-years old left her native Munich to live in Torre Achirafi on the east coast of Sicily. But her retirement plans were interrupted when she found the body of her odd job man, Valentino, lying on the beach with his face blown away.

She promised him there and then that she would find his killer and avenge his death. The story is related by her nephew, who frequently comes to stay with her, in the first book in the series, Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions.

During her investigation, she finds romance with the handsome Chief Inspector Montana, with whom she also forms an uneasy investigative partnership.

Mario Giordano was born
in Germany to Italian parents

It is during a cosy evening at her villa with Montana at the beginning of the second book that Poldi sees his pictures from a crime scene taken after the brutal murder of a female district attorney.

When Montana admits he is not making much progress with finding the woman’s killer,  Poldi decides to visit the vineyard where the bottle of wine that was used to murder the lawyer was produced.

She cannot resist competing against Montana to prove that her previous success wasn’t a fluke and that she is a better detective than him.

She is assisted in her investigation by her good friends, Padre Paolo, the parish priest, and the owner of the local bar, the ‘sad’ Signora Cocuzza.

Also helping her out with the case are her colourful Sicilian family by marriage, her three sisters-in-law, and her brother in law and his dog, Totti.

Add lots of Sicilian food and Etna wine, fortune tellers who can give you the evil eye, plenty of handsome men, even if Poldi suspects some of them as being mafiosi, and the beautiful backdrop of a smoking volcano under a blue sky. As usual, Mario Giordano serves it all up with style and humour.

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