The now 64-year-old Salvo Montalbano is no longer what he used to be. The shots are starting to fail and - let's say - he is getting quite dumb. On the other hand, it has been filling novels and short stories since 1994 and joining Camilleri's historical and political literature. And then, let's face it, when the commissioner is faced with cases of mafia, the Sicilian writer always turns out to be a bit equal to himself.
But it is not hard to forgive: with an average production of three novels a year, literature Vigatese it offers such a high quality that it has very few competitors on the Italian horizon.
It all starts in the mud. No, this is not the first man. And not even the last, unfortunately, involved in such problems. A usual story of intertwining between political administration and the mafia arrives on Montalbano's desk when, after weeks and weeks of incessant rain, a corpse is discovered in the middle of a stationary construction site in the barren and gray countryside of wet earth. It even seems to run through your veins, all of that fangue; as Catarella calls it in his now well-known phonetic deviance which, in this case, establishes a disturbing and revealing malapropism. In the same way that in an "expressionist pillicula, with the strong contrast between light and dark and with the unformed and giants", the landscape is the projection, first and foremost, of the state of mind of Montalbano who, in order to see Livia come out of the depression in which she finds herself, is ready to sacrifice her own mental serenity. The inspector's girlfriend, in fact, is still serving the consequences of what happened in the previous novel, a blade of light: the death of François, the child Livia wanted to adopt with Salvo, as well as the protagonist of The Snack Thief.
The case of Giugiù Nicotra, found killed and half naked facing mouths in a huge tunnel-tube of the construction site, he is unable to take it too much, in Montalbano. He carries on his investigations with the same enthusiasm with which he signs the mountain of papers that you find on your desk every day. This country seems to be forever destined for corruption, ill repute, the most excruciating immobility.
"Not a blade of grass could be seen, the virdi had been cummigliato by 'a dark gray semi-soft blanket' n all the same as' an open cloaca that had employed every living creature, from tingles to lizards".
The landscape is therefore, in seconds, the visible projection of a constant and unstoppable state of decay that surrounds the entire universe. It takes little for the clues, the characters, the situations to lead to the world of construction sites and public procurement. Because, in short, it reveals yet another story of intrigue between the mafia and politics.
Immediately, as soon as the investigations begin, the victim's wife wanders around: a ghost of whom we always talk, whose death is certain but whose corpse will never be seen, nor will we know. where it is and how it ended up. And then a regular guest in the Nicotra house (the real center of the story) whose existence is known but whose identity, nationality and function will remain a mystery until almost the end. Gradually - after several attempts to divert the investigation towards the crime of passion - each piece, each piece, each clue goes to reassemble a puzzle that is nothing but an enormous mud pyramid in which builders, public administrators, firms, journalists, lawyers move. A'opira of puppets during which something happens between the puppeteers that blows up the show.
It is a particularly gloomy Camilleri that of this novel. To reveal it is already the style, as well as the story. If the pastiche linguistic to which the author has accustomed us has always been in continuous evolution until, in recent years, standardizing on a recognizable register, this time there is a considerable difference. First of all, the use of adjectives and descriptions - usually rather frugal to the advantage of theatricality and action - thickens and creates the expressionistic choreography of the story. The gray and ashy tones of most of the text are dominated by the bright ones of the last part, when Livia comes out of her depression and the story is about to resolve. The syntax, moreover, is more calm and distant from the crackling artifices that, usually, the novelist associates with his marked narrative wisdom. It is as if, this time, the urge to say something has prevailed over the dramaturgical reasons. Or as if the most important thing was expressing a huge feeling of disgust. Hence the insistence on the data expressionistic and choreographic, rather than on the action and on the stage.
In short, the reading of this novel reveals a somewhat unusual Camilleri; perhaps lower in tone. Even the constant references to the most stringent Italian current events and the traditional considerations on the atavistic evils of this nation betray a writing made almost of a stomach, to indulge a feeling of mistrust which, however, never gives up hope and the way out.
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