'The Terra-Cotta Dog' by Andrea Camilleri
'The Terra-Cotta Dog' by Andrea Camilleri

The good

  • The first half of the book has some excellent mysteries: a truck is stolen, but then found later with all the goods still in it; a gangster turns himself in; a few people are murdered by the mafia; a mysterious cave is discovered; etc. It’s fast paced, exciting, and the detective work is interesting.

  • Montalbano is a fun character and both he and the Italian setting of these stories can be quite charming: he has a house right on the ocean, he goes swimming or takes walks on the beach to clear his mind, he eats what sounds like incredible Italian food prepared by his cook, he has several lovers, etc.

  • In short, the book has so much promise as a detective series, if not for a few drawbacks, as described next.

The not so good

  • The second half of the book abandons all the fun mysteries of the first half, and instead focuses on a second mystery of some events that happened 50+ years before, during World War II. This second mystery seems totally irrelevant to anything given how long ago the events took place (Montalbano’s boss even tells him it’s just a distraction!), the detective work to solve it just isn’t all that interesting, and the final resolution isn’t particularly satisfying. The whole thing seems to revolve around some weird ancient burial ritual that, I guess, the author found personally fascinating, but I found it much less interesting than all the mafia-related mysteries from the first half of the book, and was frustrated at how much time was spent on this irrelevant tangent.

Rating: 3.5 stars