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Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Salvo Montalbano has garnered millions of fans worldwide with his sardonic, engaging take on Sicilian life and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes.

The Terra-cotta Dog opens with the inspector's mysterious tête-à-tête with a mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, in a secret grotto, he finds a harrowing scene: two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-size terra-cotta dog. Montalbano's passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island's past and into a family's dark heart amid the horrors of World War II bombardment.

From sly comedy at the expense of his fellow policemen to personal soul searching that helps him enter the minds of those he must investigate, Montalbano is a detective whose earthiness and imagination coalesce into a unique, unfailing appeal. AUTHORBIO: Andrea Camilleri is the author of many books, including his Montalbano series, which has been adapted for Italian television and translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, Dutch, and Swedish.

Stephen Sartarelli lives in upstate New York. [via]