The wings of the Sphinx by Andrea Camilleri is the 11th of the first 12 published books that I have purchased and recently completed. I have also seen a TV production of the book.
The book opens with Montalbano experiencing that point in life when one is not as enthusiastic as before about the work and his relationship with Livia suggests breaking point as neither continues to be able to meet their needs as and when required. He has also reached the stage in life where he wrestles with his self about how to deal with his predicament, represented as two people with whom he debates, sometimes writing a letter from one to the other which is a good idea rather than writing to another party!.
He is called out to the murder of a young woman in her early twenties, found naked near a place names as a bridge although the span of the bridge had been removed for its iron, after being created by the allies during World War II. The local magistrate has a theory about what happened but Salvo later confirmed by the pathologist believe she was shot in the face somewhere to be unrecognisable apart from a tattoo of a particular butterfly on one of her shoulders, stripped cleaned up and then dumped where she is discovered. The Pathologist is also reaching his time of professional life when he tire of cutting open the bodies of the very young to discover how they died. He prefers to spend his time playing poker for money at a local club.
There is a second story of a man reported by his wife as being kidnapped. Salvo and his team are forced to devote time by the Police Chief because the woman has complained about their lack of apparent interest. Their preliminary investigation suggest the event was staged and he is likely to have run off with his secretary or one of his serial conquests with Mimi Augello, his deputy suggesting two resorts. The helpful friend public broadcaster that Salvo had known and used since first coming to Vigata as the chief Inspector publishes a photo and this leads to a businessman calling who provides a photo of the man with a young woman at a club in Havana. He is also in the photo and Salvo agrees to arrange for a friend to change disappearance in the photo. The man travels regularly to Havana where he has not one, not two but three young women with whom he visits all the same day. He runs around in fast cars and has a conventional wife and children who he wishes to protect from his exploits.
Montalbano arranges for the photo of the information provider to be disguised and then gives the photo to the wife who claims it is a double and complains again that Montalbano and his colleagues are not taking the kidnapping seriously. When the man turns up with the story of having been kidnapped and roughed but managed to escape the wife claims vindication and Salvo’s bosses play I told you so. However Salvo is far from convinced and organises a meeting of the employees of the man at which he goes along with the kidnap story and being roughly treated with the implication that one of those in the room was behind the kidnapping. This leads to one of the employees owning up that the was involved in the initial kidnapping as a stunt and looked after his boss for a few days until he was due to fly out with his latest” whore. Salvo is able to vindicate himself and his colleagues.
He also arranges with his TV newsman friend for a photo of the butterfly to be circulated and this reveals that more than one woman has the same Tattoo. In this instance the sister a retired widower has arranged for a young woman to become a live in Home Care Assistant. He had spied on her in the bathroom hence knowing about the Butterfly Tattoo and the young woman had resisted his sexual approach stating with him for just under two months. I cannot remember the circumstances of her departure.
The connection between this murder and more than one girl with the tattoo only becomes evident with a chance meeting with Ingrid the young attractive Scandinavian girl he met in one his early cases and who reappears from time to time usually driving an expensive fast car. In this instance h chance encounter is to have a significant bearing on the case. They enjoy the food prepared for him by the house keeper sufficient for both and probably more given his usual tendency to over eat,. They drink a lot of whisky and she presses him about the relationship with Livia about which he remains defensive. He also admits to having become attracted with the young woman half his age, the subject of the previous novel only to find she had used him in order to gain revenge on the person who had killed her twin sister. They share the same bed but it is never clear if this is just for company and comfort or if their relationship, however casual has become more.
The following morning he is uneasy about the confessional of the previous evening but Ingrid knows better and asks about his latest case about which she knows nothing, never watching the local news but immediately comments that she employed a girl for just over a month with Tattoo as now described to her, She had disappeared stealing jewellery worth several hundred thousand Euros and her husband had reported the theft to the Carabineiri who had not contacted him. Fazio continues the search of furniture makers using the substance found under the finger nails of the victim.
Ingrid had explained that the help had been arranged through her husband‘s account and who in turn explained her had taken the young women for the catholic Charity set up to help the “unfortunate“ girls. The widower also contact to report the name of the community from the girl had come and confirm that although he had attempted to seduce the girl with an offer of jewellery after she departed he had given these to a relative and he also swore that she had been a honest young woman who he trusted. Because the girl employed by Ingrid wore contact lens he was still left with missing young women with the same Tattoo as the murdered girl.
Another girl is then identified by the son of the housekeeper Adriana who is back in prison but knows that another criminal had fallen in love with a girl with the same tattoo who Salvo then finds has also disappeared.
When the investigation of furniture restorers fails to progress the mystery solving the mystery is progressed with the investigation of a fire at a paint selling shop which the investigator consider odd because there appeared to be no forced entry and the owner did not have financial problems to justify seeking an insurance fraud. Montalbano works out what happened and his technique in getting the owner to confess is brilliantly played out. He had employed yet a fourth girl with a Tattoo who had broken in after the cash of the week had placed in a drawer making a noise which had attracted his attention and seizing a gun and shot the person.
Under recent Italian law he would have not suffered any action for taking the life in such a situation but he had panicked because it was a woman and his employee and held he woman over the weekend until dumping the body from his car. He had subsequently set fire because he had been unable to find the bits of teeth that he though he been left in the room and which he could not find.
It is after the news of his arrest is reported on local TV that a priest comes forward to day that one of the girls with a Tattoo wishes to communicate about her experience with so called charitable organisation “rescuing” the girls. She reveals that the criminal organisation which persuades the girls to leave Russia for a better life was responsible for the tattoos as form of branding one group from another and they had then forced into prostitution to pay off their debts and therefore the approach on behalf of the charity had appeared to be a welcome way out. However it emerged that the organisation so called volunteers had a deal with the mafia to pay off the organisation for the girls and then put them to work sealing from the employers where they were placed. The girl now has a boyfriend and a new life but she is willing to testify against the those to had used and abused in prevent others from her country enduring the same fate,
Through the previous books the relationship between Montalbano and Livia had become strained with both having difficulty communicating over the phone reduced to pleasantries about how they were and what they were doing. As the story of the book progresses it is agreed that they should meet and eventually Livia arranges to travel assured by Salvo that the case is closed and he is free to be with her, although she remain hesitant and determines that she will come from the airport by bus knowing of old the way work has resulted he standing waiting for hours until he has been able to message news of his delay. In this instance the discovery of a body, a key member of he charity, suggesting the mafia have intervened does detain him from his intention to surprise Livia by arriving at the airport buy he does everything possible to pass the information and inquiry on to others but Livia does not answer her mobile phone and he is unable to contact her getting more and more into state. Deciding that she has returned home and is determined not to talk to him he takes the first flight and lets himself into her home, only to find that she has left her mobile at home and that she has made her way to his home and let herself. The consequence is that they row.
The first of four new episodes series nine to British TV was broadcast last Saturday week with a new Livia someone taller than the original who disappeared after a number of series so that we heard only her voice. I do not think the new actress was a great success and interestingly only her voice is heard again in the episode Saturday past although the story had another woman who Salvo became interested as it central character. I am ahead of myself. In the first episode Salvo hears Livia Calling out the name Carlo in a waking dream and with words which have a distinctive sexual context. He then keeps bumping into men called Carlo including a waiter a at restaurant and where he requests a change. As will be expected in relation to Livia there is an innocent explanation for the name, .her dress designer with a feature at the rear of her dress she does not want. A contrived amusement..
In the main story of Miss Angelica there is a robbery involving a couple of swingers celebrating the 5th wedding anniversary at a sea coast home where they are gassed to sleep with their cars then taken and their apartment in town broken into and everything stolen of great value. An anonymous letter is sent announcing a second, third and fourth robberies as the episode progresses. The second concerns Miss Angelica which has the same pattern as before except that the young woman pleads with Salvo not to disclose where she was staying which he agrees only for another anonymous letter to be sent to the local chief complaining that only half the story had been disclosed by the Inspector in his report. However he is able to talk his way out of the situation saying that he did say the car had been stolen and the property in her town residence but nothing had been taken from where she had been staying.
I cannot remember the order of the next two incidents but in one the stake out at another of the friends of the first two victims is foiled, friends who all know each other and have the knowledge of movements and locations, one of the three robbers is wounded in the shoot out as they escape but later is found dead his wound infected and the man then shot from fear if he went for treatment he would reveal his partners.
In the next situation Salvo is joined by Miss Angelica on a surveillance and nothing happens and by then the two have become lovers despite the difference in ages, not the first time this has happened.
Then in the third completed robbery this of someone in the same block as the first couple, a man who is not one of the friends but later transpires to have been a loan shark over a long period as well as jeweller. He is then found to have committed suicide. Salvo plays his hunches and discovers first that Miss Angelica is the sister of a man he has met when seeking where in the block the first couple are resident, after one of Catarella’s great name mix-ups. He has discovered video games quickly becoming an addict on the works computer. Salvo backs a hunch and Catarella searches the on line local paper archives with an article on the death of their parents either accident or suicide in a car following the father getting into great difficulties from a loan shark. They had set out on revenge and hired the robbers who had mafia connection with the first robberies a blind and with the taken goods stored safely for returning when the main task was completed which was to gain access to the record kept by the loan shark of a his customers who acquired huge debts. Angelica is shot before Salvo can protect her after a tip off because of her decision to attend the stake out with him knowing that this was a set up for him to be killed and which she had prevented.. It all therefore ends well in that the robberies are solved, the other robbers identified and presumed brought to just, but also Angelica and her brother would be prosecuted for their part in the situation that developed.. However I cannot remember all the ins and out so that connections and explanations have been missed which make the episode an integrated whole.
Livia has visited to attend the 20th birthday of Françoise, from the Snack Thief adopted by Mimi Augello’s sister and who they had planned to adopt and where they would have married with Livia moving to Sicily has this happened and where Françoise had said he wanted to be a policeman when he grew and was growing restless at University
I found the second episode of the ninth series Hall of Mirrors. more powerful because of the ending, Salvo is setting off for work or at least from his home and he encounters a neighbour having difficulties with her car and after admitting that he knows little about under the bonnet he offers to take her to garage to arrange for the car to checked and later discovered that the engine has been deliberately tampered with and requires significant repairs..
The woman works at a store and he transports her in the mornings until the vehicle is fixed, She is an attractive woman who appears very interested in him. She has a husband who works as the representative of a computer firm and is away from home although the couple have only moved from the mainland to Vigata a couple of months before,. At one level the episode could be said to centre on three meals they have together. The first at his favourite Enzio’s Trattoria where she appears to have same approach to not talking while eating and to have same food interests although later she admits to have made enquiries about him beforehand. Seasoned watchers appreciate that she is just too interested in him too soon and that it takes time for him to begin to question the sincerity of this attention.
She wants to reciprocate hospitality with a meal at home but instead accepts the wish to attend a family meal at the home of the housekeeper who is preparing her special sauce recipe of Arancini, afood which we see her prepare in the very first episode when he meets her in Young Montalbano and she is preparing the food to sell at a local deli.
(Arancini or arancine are fried rice balls coated with breadcrumbs, said to have originated in Sicily in the 10th century. Arancini are usually filled with ragù (meat sauce), tomato sauce, mozzarella, and/or peas. There are a number of local variants that differ in fillings and shape. The name derives from the food's shape and color, which is reminiscent of an orange (the Italian word for orange is arancia, and arancina means "little orange").The main type of arancino sold in Sicilian cafes are arancini con ragù, which typically consist of meat in a tomato sauce, rice, and mozzarella. Many cafes also offer arancini con burro (béchamel sauce), or specialty arancini, such as arancini con funghi (mushrooms), con pistacchi (pistachios), or con melanzane (aubergine (eggplant)).The arancini are considered a typical dish of the city of Messina, where they usually have a conic form.).
I will come to the third meal at home after explaining the that the main story commences with the setting off of two small bombs outside small warehouses in residential areas. In the first instance there are two known criminals who appear possible suspects as they live in the adjacent residential dwelling but as with many stories there appears nothing to connect the two incidents together or with the obvious candidates.
The story that emerges and which connects with the neighbour and her broken down car emerges as follows. The woman is in fact not married and Salvo learns that man she says is her husband was fired three months previously and just before she comes to settle in the house close where the Inspector lives. He is in fact running drugs which are hidden in at least one of the computers which he finds after breaking into the home of his neighbour after he becomes suspicious about her, after the discovered set up on the night of his meal with her.
Even before this he had discovered that the woman worked at the same store as the son of a local Mafioso where his mother accuses the woman of being whore and she is supposed to be married. After the meal the housekeepers and the car jolting over a rock she expresses tiredness and does not invite him in, He is suspicious and goes back to the house and see her with the mad from the store and later when a colleague is asked to check out the store/ he checks out the store the couple are observed in a changing room. When a bullet hole is found in the side of car his suspicions are further aroused when it is confirmed that the bullet came from a high velocity riffle, and intended shot and not from the spray of gun fire which they had encountered on the journey into the town where she worked and the police station is located. The Carabineiri had set up a vehicle road block and which he had attempted to by pass just as a vehicle with armed men approaches spraying the polices and vehicles with gun fire. The news that an attempt had been made to kill the woman confirms that she is not being open and honest with the Inspector.
Just before he accepts the invitation to dine at her home he learns from his journalist Free TV newsman that he is being set up so when he arrives and she insists on dining out with a large standing lamp replacing the outside lights which she needs a bulb replacement. We see theme at the first course with Salvo insisting they move inside because of the threat of mosquitoes where she tried to seduce him but he leaves to join his colleagues who have arrested the journalists cameramen outside from a rival TV station and regular critic of the Inspector at every opportunity.
The more they investigate the case, especially the bombing appear to be related to a feud between rival mafia families seeking control of the drug trade. It is as this point that the links begin to emerge after the woman and her lover suddenly disappear and hen the lover is found in a burnt out car in the middle of no where and a local resident explained that several days before he had seen two vehicles parked at the spot of the now burnt out car. He had noted the numbers not the letters which h had used for the national lottery something which did on a regular basis and later he is able to confirm the number and letters of the second car belonging to one of the mafia bosses and is prepared to give evidence despite doing so. He uses his media friend to set a trap at the home of the neighbour after finding drugs in one of the computers and that the so called husband had not worked for the company since arriving in Sicily have been sacked. The neighbour was found murdered at the same time of the fire.
In this final scene the fake husband is apprehended coming for the drugs but saves the life of Salvo as the rivals also arrive for the consignment and then offers to give testimony because of the murder of his woman friend, and with Salvo promising to speak up for the man , out of respect for the dead woman who he learns was genuinely interested in him as a way out of the situation she had been forced into in addition to life saving
Once again Salvo had found a woman close to home only for the relationship to be dashed almost before it had commenced.
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