"If Montalbano was stubborn, not even the devil could handle him." A word uttered with a strange accent, an involuntary gesture, a misplaced detail - the inspector perceives the small impossibilities of everyday life with exceptional finesse, and starts his investigations from there. It is not so much researching sin, but rather our simultaneously guilty and defenseless humanity. On rainy mornings without coffee, in a dark mood, or at midnight, bent under the weight of fatigue, on the way home, in the solitude of the Marinella terrace overlooking the sea, or even at the table of the San Calogero restaurant, with a majestically steaming meal.
These new investigations also emerge from the small cracks of the usual order: in the course of his work, inspector Montalbano stumbles upon the most diverse and peculiar crime cases and criminals. He meets old actors in the privacy of their bedrooms, he deals with respected school principals and generous prostitutes, he finds pedantic collectors in the middle of the drug trade, he comes across rough and violent peasants in the vicinity of an abandoned bunker, he hides with fugitive swindlers, and he runs into retired judges who ruminate on their past on the beach. In addition to Vigáta, his cases lead to criminal cases in Rome, Genoa and New York, and on one occasion he even has to call his own author, Camilleri, on the phone. And if all that wasn't enough, at the end we can even learn a mouth-watering recipe from Montalbano's housekeeper, Adelina. You don't need a better Christmas present than this.