Description: "Two deaths, the suicide a newly laid-off worker and an unscrupulous businessman found murdered, leads Inspector Montalbano to inspect the Halcyon, a nearly abandoned mysterious ship with no passengers."--
Review Quotes: "You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven't read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen. Aglow with local color, packed with flint-dry wit, as fresh and clean as Mediterranean seafood -- altogether transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano." --A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
"The idiosyncratic Montalbano is totally endearing." --The New York Times "Camilleri is as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator." --The Washington Post Book World "Hailing from the land of Umberto Eco and La Cosa Nostra, Montalbano can discuss a pointy-headed book like Western Attitudes Toward Death as unflinchingly as he can pore over crime-scene snuff photos. He throws together an extemporaneous lunch of shrimp with lemon and oil as gracefully as he dodges advances from attractive women." --Los Angeles Times "Like Mike Hammer or Sam Spade, Montalbano is the kind of guy who can't stay out of trouble. . . . Still, deftly and lovingly translated by Stephen Sartarelli, Camilleri makes it abundantly clear that under the gruff, sardonic exterior our inspector has a heart of gold, and that any outburst, fumbles, or threats are made only in the name of pursuing truth." --The Nation "Camilleri can do a character's whole backstory in half a paragraph." --The New Yorker "Subtle, sardonic, and molto simpatico Montalbano is the Latin re-creation of Philip Marlowe, working in a place that manages to be both more and less civilized than Chandler's Los Angeles." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "The novels of Andrea Camilleri breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humor, and the sense of despair that fills the air of Sicily." --Donna Leon