The Terra-Cotta Dog

Inspector Montalbano's investigation of a Mafia-connected supermarket heist takes a strange turn when dying words lead him to a secret grotto where two young lovers, dead for fifty years and still in each other's arms, have been watched over all this time by a terra cotta dog. Andrea Camilleri's second Montalbano novel demonstrates the series' capacity for genuine mystery beyond genre convention: the dead lovers demand their story be told, and Montalbano's determination to tell it pulls him into the horrors of wartime Sicily.

Grover Gardner's narration gives the Sicilian setting its warmth and its darkness in equal measure, making Camilleri's prose feel as natural in English as it presumably sounds in Italian. His delivery of Montalbano's investigative stubbornness has the quality of a man who cares about justice more than convenience, and the novel's historical revelations land with appropriate weight. At just under seven and a half hours, The Terra-Cotta Dog is one of the series' most emotionally resonant entries.