One of the great joys of the past couple of years has been the showing of the Montalbano series of dramatizations of the books of Andrea Camilleri which I am now reading in sequence having mistakenly commenced with the first of the TV series but third in sequence, The Snack Thief, then going back to the first - The Shape in the Water and now having completed he reading of the second The Terracotta Dog, having also commenced to read the fourth The Voice of the Violin.
I enjoyed the reading story of the Terracota Dog which I remembered from the TV show because it is the work which introduces us two key characters, his rival and deputy Mimi Augello and his front of desk man, unintentional comedian because of the mixing up of Italian and Sicilian in a way which reminds of the fake policeman, British spy in ‘Alo ‘Alo getting his English into French pronunciation badly wrong. The book also reinforces Salvo’s adoration of food, especially of sea food and of pasta dishes with unexpected ingredients tot he sauces.
First the main story or at least what arises because of the main the story. A Mafia underboss who has been on the run for over two decades contacts the Detective Inspector through his childhood friend Gege who runs prostitutes and small times drugs on an isolated stretch of beach on the outside of the town of fictitious town of Vigáta. It is important to view Sicily as a separate country in terms of being a 10000 square mile island with a population of 5 million and where the Mafia still controls some areas which in turn as a depressing effect on the economy and tourism and which is covered in the separate dramatization of Corleone, based on the life of Salvatore Riina who for a period controlled the Mafia throughout Sicily which I shall also cover later in this writing.
In the Terracotta Dog the former Mafia underboss decides to spend the rest of his life in prison rather than be terminated by the present generation of gangsters who are not men of honour. However in order to achieve his objective he needs to be captured and this involves an elaborate scheme in which the Inspector excludes his deputy and anyone prone to seek the limelight via the media. This annoys his deputy who seriously considers putting in a bid for a transfer.
Salvo admits that he likes not only to control situations but often take time to think out what is happening and he does this best on his own as well as breaking rules by cutting corners and over stepping the mark, at times by wide margins. In this instance man is captured and placed in the hands of the special anti Mafia squad. However Salvo to his horror is required to speak at a press conference, something he usually avoids and in this situation made more difficult because he has to mislead over what really happened.
Unfortunately what happened is that the Mafia contemporaries do not buy the capture story and because of their inside connections with politicians and the Justice system they are able to badly wound the prisoner when in transit is arranged between prisons. The man requests Montalbano visits and with the dying breadth reveals the location of a cave used by the contemporary gangsters to keep their stock of weapons.
The cave was originally created to hide material from the German’s during World War 2 and has an ingenious entrance involving a large rock reminding of the Secret of the Santa Vittoria. Inside the cave there is flooring, walls and roofing to protect from the damp. There is something not right about the cave which the Inspector spots and again works out and finds an inner cave where there are two bodies, later confirmed as young people of both sexes, arms entwined and shot. There is no remains pf clothing suggesting they were killed elsewhere but a life size dog made from terracotta, a dish with coins which help dates the burial and a jug. The greater part of the books is concerned in unravelling the mystery of who the young people are, why they died and came to be entombed in this manner.
He is able to follow what today we would call a cold case because he has a near death experience when those who assassinated the former underboss attempts to kill him and successfully kill his childhood friend Gege. He visits the mother and sister of the dead man to express his sorrow at the loss of his friend and who also provided him with good intelligence over many years.
While recuperating and resisting efforts of his superiors to promote him Montalbano slowly unravels the mystery. First with the help of the wife of man consulted he learns who the girl was said at the time to have run off with a soldier to the USA but this is proved to be a fiction. The girl’s boyfriend was a Muslim who worked from a ship based in the local docks repairing other ships. Montalbano also finds that two historical stories, one Muslim and one Christian were fused to create the scene found in the second cave and where the key aspect is a reawakening.
It also begins to look as if the truth will never be established until he has one of his brainwaves and with the help of the Swedish wife mentioned in The Shape in the Water he used some promised bonus money to hire a plane to make a statement about the young lovers at an event attended by a lot of people and the media and which then gets reported throughout Italy. This he hopes will bring the individual he suspects of having carried out the murder back to Sicily, in part because money allocated to compulsory purchase his land because of a new motorway tunnel lies in a bank waiting to be claimed or until it is established there is no one entitled.
The story the man tells is not what Montalbano expects. The young girl had met the boyfriend in secret because her father was not just possessive but coveted and eventually raped her. I cannot remember if it was girl or the boyfriend who had shot and wounded the father but it was one of the henchmen who carried out the murder of the couple while they were making love. I also cannot remember who the relative had also killed and led him to become an exile for the subsequent years living under a different life with a family. Montalbano in a fashion we are to learn he uses regularly decides to let sleeping dogs lie!!!!
As is the case with most of the books there are two main stories and sometimes there are unrelated. In this instance Mimi, his deputy investigates an unusual theft at a local supermarket because a vehicle with all the stolen goods is then found. Interrogation of the Supermarket manager also raises suspicions especially when a passing witness is also murdered to look like an accident but has taken the precaution of writing down his concerns and passing these in mailed letter to the Inspector. It is subsequently shown that the owner of the company supply the supermarket, a front for the Mafia was responsible for the attack on Montalbano and the killing of his friend but all in vain because the Mafia associates had also arranged for the termination of the colleague attracting too much interest by the authorities in their activities. Why the supermarket was robbed as part of the delivery of the weapons is also explained but do we remember or care?
A feature of the book is the attention given by the author to the food of Sicily and the attention given by the Inspector to his food which he likes to enjoy in silence even when he has company. Consideration of the present day meals cooked in Sicily suggests that Montalbano while appearing to be fixed on fish and pasta combinations chooses food from the all aspect of Sicilian culinary life with along the Catania coast with its Greek influence emphasis on fish ( sea bream and bass, tuna, cuttlefish and swordfish), olives and fresh vegetables such as egg plants, peppers and tomatoes while Arabia provides the use of lemons and other citrus fruits. A more detailed re-examination of The Terracotta Dog especially the notes at the back explains that calia e simenza is a mix of roasted chic peas and pumpkin seeds sometimes with peanuts added, an Arabic influenced dish; the Pasta ‘nastciata is a casserole of elbow(?) macaroni, penne, ziti, tomato sauce and mince beef with Parmesan cheese and béchamel blended. Mensa is a calf’s spleen, sliced into thin strips land cooked in fat while fresh anchovies all agretto means cooked in a sauce made with lemon juice. Pasta al forno in a casserole which can be made with meat, eggs, tomato or cream sauces; and pasta con sarde is broad spaghetti like rings with a sauce of fresh sardines and the tops of wild fennel, pine nuts, raisins, garlic and saffron while the second dish on the menu purpi ala carrettera is octopus served in a sauce of olive oil lemon and a great deal of hot pepper. There is also reference to tabesea pizza (?) and to mostacciola( small sweet cakes of chocolate, almonds and candid fruits) where I can read my handwriting while others notes remain indecipherable written in bed the early of the night or dawn! Not sure I would like to try some of the dishes. More a salami with French bread and olives man, me.
Corleone was the name of the Mafia family in the most celebrated of films set mainly in the USA and but also one part in Sicily- The Godfather. Corleone is a real town of 12000 people in the province of Palermo and known as the birthplace of several Mafia bosses from the fictional head of the family in the Godfather to seven real life monsters, so called men of honour who grew up at the same time and with some family members subsequently carrying on the criminality which terrorised and engulfed the whole community for generations. The most notorious is still alive and in prison Salvatore Riina. He joined the local Mafia at the age of 19. Killed a man in an argument and served six years in prison.
He began to take power from the local leader with the help of other local young men but in the 1950 their power was a very local and they were referred as the peasant mafia by the major gangs based on Palermo. Riina and his associates spent several years hunting down and killing all the associates of the former local leadership with the consequence of going into hiding when warrants for their arrest were issued. In 1969 Riina and one of the others were caught but fixed the jury and witnesses and indicted once more he went into open hiding for the next two decades.
According to the Italian made TV series he acquired a large guarded property growing tomatoes and citrus fruit. Riina became the local boss while others were captured and sent to prison. Despite having a good life, married with a family his ambition for power and wealth remained so he entered the exceptionally lucrative heroin trade which became central to the Mafia economy in the 1970’s as it did in the USA, assisted I believe by the CIA following the Vietnam war for its operations in the middle east and central America and by key figures in Italian society in a similar involvement as hedge funds have been in the late 1990 and after the millennium in terms of the impact on society and the involvement of those in politics and the justice system as well as capitalist enterprise. Politicians and judges who got in the way were murdered often openly.
In 1981 Riina’s people launched a take over war on his rivals, especially those based in Palermo and in which at least a thousand deaths occurred, more than the total of British soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. He became the most powerful and wealthy Mafia head in Sicily until the intervention of Judge Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borseillini.
Born a couple of months after me in 1939 Falcone together with Paolo Borseillini, a magistrate and who grew up together in the same neighbourhood, attending the same schools as boys who became the Mafioso leaders they set out to fight, one a traditional conservative catholic and the other supporting communist values although both were never activity in party politics or joined a particular party. Both men were murdered on the orders of Riina after Falcone had brought back from South America the former boss of one of the deposed rivals who provide key testimony in the famous Maxi trials.
Until the trial in which 475 men were indicted the existence of the Mafia was denied at all levels within Italian society and in fact as in America they ran Crime Incorporated operating front legitimate businesses for laundering money, funding political parties, and buying into the agencies of justice. With Province wide management and coordinating committees as well as national.
At first 360 individuals were convicted and sentenced to a total of 2665 years in prison although a proportion was in absentia. However by 1989, that is three years later the process of appeal led to only sixty technically remaining in prison I say technically because by a combination of bribery and terror life remained comfortable for the majority.
Falcone was murdered in May 1992 and Borseillini in July of the same year, the action taken because the original charges were upheld by the appeal judge in January 1992. There remains strong suspicion that the Italian secret service, who used the Mafia for political as well as personal purposes were involved with the killings. Recently indicted for under age sex former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was said to have bargained with the Mafia, in a political electoral agreement involving an end to the car bombings of anti Mafia investigators and a “moderation“ of the crackdown on their activities..
Riina, as portrayed in the film was betrayed by an associate who he had told would never be made a boss who then fled knowing Riina’s propensity to get rid of potential rivals and provided the evidence of the man’s residence with the wife first identified leaving the property and then Riina himself on January 19th 1993. The immediate outcome was another reign of terror with bombings of art galleries and churches and the deaths of a two month old child and a nine year old girl. He was subsequently indicted, convicted and sentenced for over one hundred counts of murder and the authorities have taken steps to try and prevent him continuing to control Sicilian crime confiscating over $100 million they have so far been able to identity of his illicit fortune.
Only in in 2006 was the man believed to have taken over from Riina captured after being 43 years on the run. Riina’s two sons followed him convicted of murders in the case of the eldest and for extortion and money laundering in the instance of the younger and both are presently in prison.
The story of this Italian made 2007 mini series originally in six episodes is told through the experience of a contemporary of Riina’s who went to the same school but choose the path of the law and who works for Falcone and Borseillini and survives several attempts on his life, the placing of his wife and son in danger and leading to the breaking up of the marriage although is son joins the police much to the horror of both parents, but which in turn leads to the parents getting back together and seeing the capture and imprisonment of Riina.
In an IMDb note the director of the series explains that this character was made up “to represent all the ordinary men who fought the mafia over the years. Through him we meet the historic crime fighting Police chiefs, judges, politicians (Giuliano, Falcone, Borseillini etc.) and as their lives were all cut short by the Cosa nostra we felt we needed a figure who stayed alive and told their stories. The sad truth is that the real heroes were all killed before they could witness the arrest of the boss Riina.” This truth is not just sad but an indictment of the failure of the post war Italian political and judicial system. It is a grim and depressing reality behind the deaths of some very brave individuals and their families.
The ongoing reality of the contemporary Mafia in the USA was brought home to everyone through the brilliant TV fictional series, The Sopranos broadcast in six seasons and a total of 86 episodes and where the outstanding actor who played Tony Soprano, James Gandolfini died on the 19th June of this year aged only 52. I watched the series when it was first run between 1999 and 2007. I viewed the series again shown back to back on Sky a couple of years back, except for the final season concluding episodes. As Sky have released the full series through On Demand it is my intention to finish the viewing and my writing up soon.
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