WEB NEWS, FEATURES & REVIEWS

In Italy, Andrea Camilleri is a best-seller with his series based around the Sicilian Police Inspector Salvo Montalbano -- so Macmillan Picador can be forgiven their small fanfare in launching the series in translation over here. Sicily? Crime? It's not what you expect. Far from grisly or hyper-sexed, these tales are consummately light and witty -- more Father Brown and Don Camillo than Don Corleone. None the worse for that. First in the series, The Shape of Water, has the Inspector presented with an open-and-shut case: prominent politician dies of heart attack during or after illicit sex in his car at a well-known trysting point. A little too open-and-shut, thinks the Inspector. Especially when the car arrived at the spot not by the obvious, if narrow, path but via a barely navigable dried-up river bed. And is the valuable necklace found nearby a coincidence? And why are local big-shots -- all of whom know that, despite what foreigners think, their own Sicilian Inspector is resolute and incorruptible -- so insistent that he call off the case?