Celebrating Italian literary legend Inspector Montelbano’s 31st and final adventure
It’s been the big farewell, one of the biggest in the story of Italian, or specifically Sicilian, literary crime. From Vigata and Agrigento, to Palermo and Ragusa, the real and imaginary worlds of Inspector Salvò Montelbano have been celebrating his 31st and final adventure. Riccardino was published on Thursday 17th July, almost a year to the day of the death of his creator Andrea Camilleri.
The author was into his sixties when the whole Montalbano saga got under way. Andrea Camilleri had been successful in both theatre and cinema as a director and teacher, who had tried a couple of times to write a novel. But it was after reading to his ailing father that he struck gold with Salvo Montalbano. He invented Montalbano’s adventures in their birthplace to amuse his dying parent who was bored with the books they were reading. His father encouraged him to write the tales down.
Though both the detective and the author would be reluctant to admit it, Montalbano is a phenomenon. The two often quarrel (spoiler alert) as to who is really in charge of the plot, the creator or the created. Increasingly testy and disappointed with his detective work, Riccardino is the end of the line for Commissario Montalbano. The novel was first written in 2006, locked in a drawer, then revised ten years later. Again, it was locked away by his publishers and friends, the Sellerio family, until a year after the author’s death.
On the day of publication Riccardino recorded the highest sale of any of the highly popular Montalbano books ever. In part, the success is due to the quirky television versions of the novels, enhanced by the brilliant portrayal of the grumpy Sicilian detective by the actor Luca Zingaretti; he is the Montalbano icon and brand. But the magic ingredient is the charm and cunning of Sicily and its culture, la Sicilianità. The Montalbano cult has brought millions of visitors from across the world to Vigata, the centre of the Montalbano world.
The port setting of the novel is a thinly disguised Porto Empidocle, Camilleri’s birthplace. The disguise is so thin that today the road signs welcome you to ‘Porto Empidocle / Vigata.
The story starts with a familiar twist, a mysterious midnight phone call from Riccardino. “You know me, don’t you? I am Riccardino. Meet me at the Bar Aurora.” Next thing Montalbano, a chronic insomniac, has nodded off, only to be awoken by the Vigata police and famously linguistically confused Poliziotto Agatino Catarella (brilliantly played in the television series by Angelo Russo), who tells him through mangled verbiage that there has been a killing. Crowds have gathered round the body, and, oh yes, it’s outside the Bar Aurora.
The loyal deputies Augello and Fazio are holding the crowds back as Montalbano arrives to a hero’s welcome. “Ah look, it’s Montalbano,” shouts a spectator. “But which one – is it the real one, or the one we see on tv?”
So, the game begins, a battle between the real and the imagined, the creator and created, the mixture of truth and illusion in Sicily. The contest persists through the investigation into the slain man, Riccardino, and his strange companions; a powerful bishop, lovers, and the Mafia.
The investigation goes nowhere and in desperation Commissario Salvò puts in a call to Rome, to Cammilleri himself. “You got me into this mess, now get me out of it – where do I go next?” The author says he’ll come down to Sicily to help out, “actually it’s you who got me into this whole business. You are the one running the show.”
The story is a homage to Sicily’s greatest dramatist, Luigi Pirandello, and his sense of psychodrama and the surreal, particularly in his masterpiece Six Characters in Search of an Author. The book also acknowledges another great Sicilian writer, Leonardo Sciascia, the epitome of sicilianità, who helped Enzo and Elvira Sellerio set up the Palermo publishing house that owes so much of its success to the two authors.
Sciascia once told me, on a visit the year before he died, “I have breathed this atmosphere of Mafia since birth. It shouldn’t be romanticised. It always existed by and for crime, la criminalità.” In the new book, the increasingly grumpy and disillusioned Salvo Montalbano complains to his author that “as Sciascia said, murder his banal, it solves nothing. It’s cheap.”
He is particularly sympathetic to the Catalan writer Manuel Vazquez Montalban, from whom he borrowed the Montalbano surname. Just before he died in 2003, Montalban lamented that his grumpy, contrarian, and also gastronome, detective Pepe Carvalho would be remembered long after he, his other books and political activism had been forgotten.
It’s the Sherlock Holmes perplex. Conan Doyle hugely resented the celebrity of his creation, the super sleuth of 221b Baker Street. Worst was when he had to bring him back from the dead at the Reichenbach Falls for a run of sequels. But, for Salvo Montalbano, there is no Reichenbach Falls, he’s not coming back. How he ends is a mystery on surreal Pirandello lines. He renounces the world of blood and corpses, illustrious or otherwise, and fades into the imagination.
Much of Sicily will mourn and celebrate. The Montalbano books and television dramas, have drawn millions of Italians and overseas tourists to the provinces of Ragusa and Agrigento, the heart of Montalbano country. This is largely due to the magic of television dramas led by the charismatic Zingaretti and director Alberto Sironi, who died just a few weeks after Camilleri. Camilleri was deeply involved in the production, and of the equally successful ‘Young Montalbano’ series. Many, if not most, of the supporting cast are local Sicilian actors and amateurs.
“It has had a terrific effect – really revived the region,” said Angelo di Fede, manager of L’Eremo della Giubiliana south of Ragusa. “The visitors came pouring in – though it’s not so good with Covid now. The foreigners aren’t coming because of the restrictions, but the Italians are, and they love all the images of this area they see in the Montalbano films”.
“Yes, it was a real privilege, our hotel (a converted priory), was used for the first murder in the Montalbano story ever filmed. It was from The Voice of the Violin – the third novel filmed here in 1999.”
One of the charms, frustrations, and great literary qualities of the books is the language. It is a Sicilian-Italian amalgam, a unique creation by Camilleri himself now studied in schools and universities. There are excellent guides and footnotes in two collections of short stories of Montalbano published by Mondadori.
Riccardino is expressed in this style of supreme Sicilian irony in abundance. Some brilliant expressions are unique creations of Montalbano and Camilleri. Among the favourites are: cabasisi, meaning balls. As in, “Mimi vinni mittuto for a combattimento da ‘na pidata nei cabasisi”, which means “Mimi was put out of the fight by a kick in the balls.” And tambasiare, meaning to putter about the house with no aim.
Most appropriate for the Covid era and the passing of the great Montalbano-Camilleri team is accuttufarsi. It wraps up a sense of being defeated, fed up, and withdrawing from society.
Addio Montalbano, and Camilleri, masters and magicians both. May your fame still grow.