The Voice of the Violin

Andrea Camilleri

Translated by Stephen Sartarelli
10 August 2017
9781509856343
357 pages

Synopsis

The Voice of the Violin by Andrea Camilleri is the fourth novel in the wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series.

The commissioner kept looking at him with an expression that combined contempt and commiseration, apparently discerning unmistakable signs of senile dementia in the inspector.

"I'm going to speak very frankly, Montalbano. I don't have a very high opinion of you."

"Nor I of you," the inspector replied bluntly.

Montalbano's gruesome discovery of a naked young woman suffocated in her bed immediately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques-dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim's friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to this murder . . .

The Voice of the Violin is followed by the fifth novel in this compelling mystery series, Excursion to Tindari.

Both farcical and endearing, Montalbano is a cross between Columbo and Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, with the added culinary idiosyncrasies of an Italian Maigret.