22nd October 2024
The Shape of Water is the first in the series of novels by Andrea Camilleri (1925-2019) featuring the Sicily-based Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The English translation in the Picador edition of 2004 is by Stephen Sartarelli, who also provides some informative Notes.
The narrative moves quickly from the start and maintains a brisk pace. The first murder victim is found in the opening chapter: Silvio Luparello, a well-connected engineer, discovered on a rubbish-strewn tract of Mediterranean brush – the Pasture, a site frequented by drug dealers and prostitutes – on the outskirts of Vigàta, Montalbano’s home town.
The victim being a prominent behind-the-scenes figure in Sicilian politics – as well as a wealthy businessman – it is inevitable that Montalbano’s investigation becomes embroiled in a tangled web of criminality, graft and corruption, this network of murky connections apparently extending into the judiciary and the Church. Running in parallel with this, the police also have to use their resources in dealing with a nasty tit-for-tat war between the island’s Cuffaro and Sinagra gangs; we are not spared the details of one particularly gruesome killing.
The Inspector solves the Luparello case, of course, using a potent combination of policing skills, imaginative intuition and some unorthodox approaches to the gathering of evidence, not all of which are technically above board. He is aided by his loyal subordinates, including the efficient sergeant, Guiseppe Fazio. I liked the latter’s appreciation of the effectiveness of the interview technique of another colleague, Giallombardo: “You know what he’s like: someone spends a couple of hours with him, talking like he’s known him for a hundred years, and afterward he realises he’s told him secrets he wouldn’t even tell the priest at confession”.
Camilleri does not hide his views – a combination of disappointment, contempt and resignation – on the general governance of Sicily, often expressing himself with a rich irony. The site of the murder is near to the ruins of a large chemical works that had opened “when it seemed the magnificent the winds of progress were blowing strong”. Now, however, the breeze had dropped altogether “leaving a shambles of compensation benefits and unemployment in its wake…. The old structures still soared, corroded by weather, neglect and sea salt, looking more and more like architectures designed by Gaudi under the influence of hallucinogens”.
It turns out that evidence found in the ruined chemical works has a crucial role to play in the development of Montalbano’s investigations. More generally, however, one also senses that the site itself represents the author’s use of an early metaphor for the overall context of life in Sicily: that notwithstanding any occasional grounds for optimism about economic and social progress, there is an inevitability about the dissatisfaction with the eventual outturn.
It is against this background that the dogged and admirable Inspector Montalbano maintains his efforts to solve crime and hold its perpetrators to account. In doing so, he might justifiably be seen as honouring the memory of those in Sicily’s actual police and judiciary – not least the magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, assassinated by the Mafia in 1992 – who, with even greater courage and determination, paid the ultimate price in their pursuit of what they believed to be right.
JR Alexander 