Last night I finished reading Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novel ‘August Heat’. Unsurprisingly, the title alludes to the fact that the story takes place during an extremely hot August in Montalbano’s Sicily and it amused me that I was reading it at a time when we are experiencing some pretty cold weather here. The book gave me a nightly escape to warm up! As you might expect, Montalbano spends much of the book suffering in the heat, regularly changing his clothes and going for night-time swims to cool himself down and a key element of the plot is the implication that the heat rather befuddles his mind such that he behaves somewhat irrationally and allows himself to be tempted into a questionable dalliance with the twin sister of the story’s victim (a young girl whose body is found hidden in a trunk in an illegally built basement of a coastal villa).
I always enjoy Montalbano novels but I particularly liked this one as it was not too obvious how the plot would unfold but also not too convoluted. About two-thirds of the way through I thought I had been clever and identified what the main plot twist would be, but it turned out that I wasn’t right and everything unfolded in a more straightforward, but still satisfying, manner. The book ends leaving Montalbano in a rather confused state in relation to his long-term and long-distance girlfriend/partner Livia (who I have never really warmed to) and it will be interesting to see how this aspect of his life develops in the next book in the series.
Tim O'Hare 