Riccardino

The long-running and much-loved Salvo Montalbano series, set in Vigàta, Sicily, concludes with an astonishing, meta-infused narrative that integrates the series' creator, Camilleri himself, into the story as a character called the Author, complete with a "smoke-shredded voice." (Camilleri, who died in 2019, was a notoriously heavy smoker.) A man called Riccardino has been shot, and what at first seems a revenge killing stemming from his dalliances with friends' wives, turns darker when Montalbano finds evidence that the "four musketeers," as the friends are known, are involved in a criminal enterprise. The reader learns that Montalbano has been having extensive interactions with the Author, who has been publishing novels based on the detective's cases, which have resulted in a popular television program. Montalbano, tired and confused after his long and adversarial career, keeps wondering how his other self, the one on TV, might act, and he's incensed when the Author keeps faxing him possible resolutions to the case he's working on. One scenario the Author suggests would have the detective involved in something of an OK Corral confrontation; exasperated, Montalbano decides to terminate his relationship with this intrusive writer. What follows will delight Camilleri's legions of fans, many of whom have long felt a meta-infused connection of their own with Montalbano, his friends and colleagues, and the world of Vigàta.

In an amusing metafictional twist, Camilleri (1925--2019) plays a part in his elegiac 28th and final mystery featuring Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano (after The Cook of the Halcyon). Just shy of five o'clock in the morning, Montalbano's phone rings. The caller identifies himself as Riccardino and says, "We're all here already, outside the Bar Aurora, and you're the only one missing!" Peeved at being disturbed, Montalbano tells the stranger he'll be right there, hangs up, and goes back to bed. A second call comes an hour later--from his police colleagues, who ask him to come to the Bar Aurora to investigate the murder of Riccardo Lopresti. Montalbano feels "strangely certain--with a certainty as absolute as it was inexplicable--that the poor bastard who was shot was the same person who had called him on the phone before dawn by dialing a wrong number." As motives begin to multiply, Montalbano's investigation is muddled by phone calls from "the Author" spouting far-fetched suggestions on how to proceed. Incisive wit colors this insightful and intriguing farewell. The sad, poetic ending is perfect. (Sept.)