Inspector Montalbano

This deluxe box set edition brings together the first three adventures of Commissioner Salvo Montalbano, a detective novel series set in Sicily that has been praised by critics and audiences alike, and whose television series has been broadcast for over 20 years in Italy.

The Shape of Water

Salvo Montalbano is forty-five years old, still has a girlfriend in Genoa, and is the police commissioner of the small town of Vigàta, Sicily, which, although not on any map of this world, is more real than life itself. A loyal friend to his friends, a lover of good food, and aware that the earth has revolved and will revolve many times around the sun.

On this occasion, a well-known politician and businessman is found dead, semi-naked inside his car in a slum where prostitution and drugs reign. Everything points to him having died of a heart attack after having intimate relations with an unknown person. However, Commissioner Montalbano is not convinced, and armed with his natural nose for strange behaviors, he sets out to uncover the sexual and political plot hidden behind the alleged crime.
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The Terracotta Dog

An absurd robbery in a supermarket, the somewhat bizarre imprisonment of a mafia boss, a murder committed during the Second World War. However, despite Montalbano's firm determination to solve these cases, his true passion is deciphering their symbolic content. "Every crime carries a message; the question is to know the code of whoever wrote it," an eccentric priest reminds the commissioner. Thus, the main protagonist of this novel - as of all those starring Montalbano - is his particular way of conceiving the world. Gestures, details, appearances play a relevant role, and language becomes a key instrument for understanding reality.
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The Snack Thief

The commissioner must investigate the murder of a retired merchant, whose lover, a young Tunisian woman who disappeared after the crime, is the object of all suspicion. However, the investigation guides Montalbano into the murky world of secret services and their dirty war against international terrorism. The reason of State is subjected to his relentless instinct for justice, "Quixotic" according to one of the secret agents. At the same time, the plot holds unusual surprises, such as a Montalbano deeply moved by the fate of the accused young woman's son, to the point of proposing marriage to his patient yet distant partner Livia.