The Pyramid of Mud

Dogged detective, pasta connoisseur and volcanictempered Inspector Salvo Montalbano is back for Camilleri’s 22nd sleuthing adventure around his beloved Sicily. Long-term love, mordant Livia, is pining for him from Genoa, as ever, while housekeeper Adelina piles Montalbano’s fridge with nightly comforts to reheat after a tempestuous day. “Tekka offa ya boots,” she admonishes as he walks into his clean apartment, frowning as he goes to take a shower, “Butta bathroom izza sparklin’ clean!” Okay, so there’s a half-naked man’s body stabbed between the shoulders, stuffed into a 20-foot pipe down a 60-foot tunnel on a rapidly drowning building site which turned into a pyramid of mud in unforgiving rainfall. But Camilleri is all about the caricatures cockney sidekick Catarella says there’s someone at the station who will only talk to our everravenous ’tec “poisonally, in poisins”. And Mafia aside, there’s still a large portion of spaghetti and squid ink waiting to be consumed before he flies to unpredictable Livia’s side, with an exonerating artificial bone purchased last minute at the pet store for her new puppy.