A Review of The Terra-Cotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri

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Second entry in the Inspector Montalbano series. This one starts with Montalbano meeting with his friend and manager of the pasture, Gege Gullota. Gege relays to Montalbano a message that mafia member Tano The Greek would like to meet with the inspector. Montalbano meets with Tano and Tano tells him that he is tired of the mafia life and would like to be taken in in a staged arrest so he can save face. Montalbano agrees and sets up an arrest. Tano's now angry former mafia buddies now enact revenge and kill Tano. Before Tano dies he tells Montalbano about a cave near Vigata that used to store WWII black market goods but now stores illegal arms.

Montalbano finds the caves and searches it connecting it to a grocery store heist that occurred in town a few days prior. Upon further inspection of the cave, Montalbano is able to find out that there is a second portion of the cave that was sealed off. He and his team make their way into the second cave with pickaxes and shovels and find the bodies of two young lovers placed in some ritualistic resting place.

The bodies are placed on a rug with a bowl with coins in one corner, an empty jug of water, in another corner and a terracotta dog watching over them in the final corner. Montalbano is able to piece together information from the bodies and interviewing local townsfolks to figure out who the two lovers are. Now he wants to know who killed them and who placed them in their ritualistic rest. He learns that the grave is a combination of the Christian legend of the Seven Sleepers (coins and water jug) as well as an Islamic symbol of the dog called Kymtyr.

Knowing that the person who placed them there must be someone familiar with both Christian and Islamic traditions and customs he searches and determines that the dead girl's younger cousin, Lillo. Lillo hasn't been heard from since the allied invasion of Sicily and is presumed to have either changed his identity or is dead.

Montalbano using his clever mind makes a big scene at the cave where the bodies were found using an advertising airplane and gets the story all over news stations and newspapers all over Italy. Finally Lillo contacts Montalbano and tells him the story. Lisetta Moscato and Mario Cunich were to young lovers. Lisetta's father raped Lisetta so she ran away. Her father sends one of his men to murder the couple. Right after they are murdered, Lillo walks in and kills the assassin. Lillo then stages the bodies in the cave, is presumed to have either been killed in the allied bombing or somewhere else and isn't seen from again.

Very good book. This is not one of those detective books that is all action, interrogations, and murder. This is a detective that uses his brain to solve cases. Here we see an old mystery accidentally surface and Montalbano solves it. Looking forward to the next installment.