In between elaborately prepared meals, Montalbano also ponders the ethics of his profession and the uncertain nature of truth in a world largely given over to concealment and deception. Why is Pietro Rizzo, the dead man’s closest political ally, so undisturbed by Luparello’s death? What is the significance of a valuable necklace discovered near the car? And what does any of this have to do with a transvestite named Marilyn?įast-paced, sharp-edged, and laced with hard-boiled humour, The Shape of Water marks the debut of Inspector Montalbano, a wily gourmand whose inquiries only begin with the facts of the case. As the local television news sanitizes the incident and the crime lab scrambles for answers, Police Inspector Salvo Montalbano tries to assemble a puzzle whose pieces refuse to fit. Only three days after his appointment, however, a pair of trash collectors find Luparello dead in his BMW in a kind of open-air brothel on the outskirts of town, his head thrown back and his trousers lowered. After nearly twenty years of low-profile political manoeuvring, Luparello has finally gained control of the local arm of his political party and has secured his long-hoped-for appointment as provincial secretary. One citizen who has both risen and fallen is Silvio Luparello, a.k.a. Those who stumble quickly learn new meanings to the words ferocity and horror. Now local enterprise of a different sort flourishes: drug dealers and prostitutes of every flavour. The goats of Vigàta once grazed on the trash-strewn site still known as the Pasture. Those who succeed in Vigàta have learned an astonishing array of tricks, either sexual, political, or both. The Shape of Water is the first in Andrea Camilleris wry, brilliantly compelling Sicilian crime series, featuring Inspector Montalbano. In the seaside town of Vigàta, Sicily, innocence and idealism die even faster than the whores, drifters, and small-time Mafiosi who infest the village with an air of gritty decadence and menace.

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