Angelica's Smile by Andrea Camilleri

Angelica's Smile by Andrea Camilleri
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another fine, hilarious, romp from the master of Sicilian crime novels, and his equally masterful translator Stephen Sartirelli.

In this outing, Montalbano needs to solve a series of burglaries. Along the way, he meets the beautiful Angelica, who reminds the inspector of his own teenaged fantasies of the Angelica of Orlando Furioso. Consequently, Camirelli peppers the story with quotes from Orlando Furioso, leaving poor Sartirelli to say "in certain cases I had to retranslate the excerpt because the Reynolds translation no longer contained the textual ambiguities that enabled Camilleri to apply the passage to his own story."  I really don't pity the translator's job, but Sartirelli is always up to the challenge.

Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri

Treasure Hunt by Andrea Camilleri

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yet another brilliantly written whodunnit about Chief Inspector Montalbano from Andrea Camilleri. You get all the clues, and any careful reader should be able to figure out the culprit before it's over. But Camilleri never springs any surprises and there's never an annoying Deus Ex Machina to solve the puzzle. On top of Camilleri's excellent mystery writing, we have his descriptions of the food and geography of Sicily that read like a travelogue. And finally Stephen Sartarelli's amazing translations!

In this entry, the initial crime is almost inconsequential, but it leads Montalbano to accept the challenge to go on a "treasure hunt".  As always, I find myself sidetracked by Sartarelli's translation magic. One of the clues in the treasure hunt is a simple substitution cipher, and I initially wondered at the ability to translate it wholesale into English, before it occurred to me that he actually just translated the plaintext, and then used the rules deduced by the inspector to recreate the enciphered text, but it doesn't detract from Sartarelli's brilliance.

You get no medals for being able to figure out who's leading Montalbano on this treasure hunt, and the conclusion is fairly predictable, but you'll enjoy yourself almost every step of the way (there is one particularly gruesome murder that I hope you don't enjoy...)

The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri

The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's not much to be said about Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano mysteries that I haven't said before. They're mostly tightly written whodunnit's. You get all the clues and any careful reader should be able to figure out the culprit before it's over. But Camilleri never springs any surprises and there's never an annoying Deus Ex Machina to solve the puzzle. On top of Camilleri's excellent mystery writing, we have his descriptions of the food and geography of Sicily that read like a travelogue. And finally Stephen Sartarelli's amazing translations!

In this entry, it's not so much a whodunnit, as a what-was-it-that-was-dun. Montalbano's senior investigator, Fazio, disappears, apparently while involved in an investigation, and when found he's suffering from temporary amnesia from a couple of blows to the head. Montalbano has to figure out both who tried to kill Fazio, and why.  Following the trail leads to a one-time ballet dancer who may have tried to blackmail someone. The only really sour note in the story comes when Montalbano finds a letter to the dancer, and completely misinterprets it. I'd venture to say that any Canadian reader, and most American or British readers, would have the identical reaction that I did, that Montalbano was extremely obtuse to not understand who the author was. But I don't think any amount of superlative editing could change the fact that this is probably a cultural difference between Sicily and practically anywhere else in the Western world.

Anyway, Camilleri is brilliant!

Let It Ride by John McFetridge

Let It Ride by John McFetridge
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's not a mystery and it's not really a thriller (though it's labelled as both), but somehow this story managed to keep my attention pretty thoroughly.

It's a thinly disguised tale of what's actually going on in Canadian organized crime. One of the review quotes on the back cover praised McFetridge's imagination, and wondered where he could come up with this stuff. I figure the reviewer must have been American, because no Canadian could have missed many of these details: The Saints of Hell (read "Hell's Angels"); the Lone Gunmen (read "Bandidos" — the massacre of the Lone Gunmen happened pretty much as-written, to the Bandidos, just a few kilometers from my home); the ex-leader of the Saints, "Mon Oncle"  Bouchard and the ex-leader of the Hells Angels in Canada, "Mom" Boucher; even the arrest and trial of many of the narcotics officers who were supposed to be taking down these criminals. 

But the fact that the author used real events in the biker wars to back his story doesn't detract in any way from a pretty good read. 

I can't say I agree with McFetridge's apparent belief that we Canadians all really want to be Americans, but maybe I'm just putting his characters opinions in his own head. I do love the details about how the Canadian bikers, even though affiliated with the American gangs had their own constitutions that were more egalitatarian: they permitted blacks and ex-cops! McFetridge also pretty much nails Canadian racism: we all like to think we're less racist than America, and by and large we probably are, but there are still very real barriers to equality. Sunitha's father's story of immigrating to Canada from India, only to find that he'd never be allowed to be a Canadian in anything but name, is  too often heard.

The Gods of Guilt by Michael Connelly

The Gods of Guilt (Lincoln Lawyer) by Michael Connelly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm not sure whether I like Michael Connolly's “Lincoln Lawyer”, Mickey Haller, or Hieronymus (Harry) Bosch better. I think it probably depends which one I've read most recently!

Whatever the case, I love Mickey Haller. Mickey is conflicted. He knows that the job he does as a criminal defense lawyer is important, and he knows that he's very, very, good at it. But he also knows that sometimes he helps guilty men walk. And that makes him feel guilty too. While that guilt makes him human, and occasionally drives him to drink, he's not the kind of self-indulgent sot that I so hate in mysteries.

I won't spoil the revelation to explain who the Gods of Guilt of the title are, but of course it also refers to all the people who Mickey feels are judging him for the choices he's made through his career (not all of whom are even alive).

There's no “whodunnit” here. We know almost immediately that Mickey's client is innocent, and it doesn't take much longer to be pretty sure who is guilty. What is here in this story is a solid courtroom procedural, with plenty of soul-searching about how one does the right thing, and even what that right thing is.

The Fatal Touch by Conor Fitzgerald

The Fatal Touch (Commissario Alec Blume) by Conor Fitzgerald
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not as good as Fitzgerald's first outing, but still enjoyable.

I had some difficulty with credibility, but the reader has to remember we're talking about Italy. Or at least the Italy of crime fiction. The corrupt Carabiniere seems over-the-top, and certainly would be if set in North America, but is probably not worse than I have seen in other crime fiction set in Italy. I don't know enough, personally, about Italy to know how corrupt the police are, but one suspects that the novels might not be telling the whole story.

On the positive side, the police work is solid, and clues don't have to appear by wild coincidence to advance the plot.

Storm Front by John Sandford

Storm Front (A Virgil Flowers Novel) by John Sandford

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Somehow Sandford has transitioned from writing "crime capers" to pure "capers". I found this book more funny than believable, but the laughter was enough.

Ya just gotta love that fuckin' Flowers.

Incidentally, the archaeological find that underlies this whole story doesn't actually reveal anything new: the connection between the Egyptian Siamun and the Jewish King Solomon has been made before.

I am, however, concerned with Sandford's apparent use of co-writers without credit. Michele Cook merely gets a mention in the dedication, but apparently wrote the first draft. C'mon, this is the same sort of thing that has turned "internships" into slavery. If she did the work, credit her as a co-writer!

It's also another example of the execrable work of the folks who write cover blurbs: "… an Israeli cop [is] tailing a man who’s smuggled out an extraordinary relic—a copper scroll revealing startling details about the man known as King Solomon." WTF? It was a bowling-ball-sized stone!