I've read a couple of Inspector Montalbano mysteries and enjoyed them and the view of modern Italian lives they offer, so I decided that my vacation tour needed to extend beyond Scotland and England to Italy. The story starts with the unexpected discovery of a dead body by Montalbano's coworker, Mimi. Unfortunately, Mimi found the body after jumping off his lover's balcony and breaking into the apartment below her's to escape her husband, which leads to the dilemma of how to investigate a murder that can't be reported? The story is, as always, well written; the plot intriguingly complex and convoluted yet solved elegantly and simply. My only gripe was the relationship between Montalbano and Antonia at the expense of Livia, although it was handled well, because I like Livia. My only gripe with the author was that at the very end of the story, he calls Antonia a girl, after scrupulously calling her a woman throughout the story. Ah well, nothing can be perfect, eh? A solid A.

An entertaining murder mystery set in Sicily without mafia. Characters have some interest and there is a romance which I generally like.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Although Andrea Camilleri died in 2019 at age 93, his biting yet entertaining police procedurals are still making their way, via translation, to America. The Sicilian Method is a clever title, suggesting at first a crime methodology, but better understood as a phrase from acting. Scattered across bedrooms and stages of the imagined town of Vigàta, Sicily, the crimes that Inspector Montalbano investigates here are also very clever, clearly the product of a twisted mind involved with stagecraft and performance. ...

There’s no need to read the other 25 Inspector Montalbano books before The Sicilian Method, but this enjoyable romp may send readers scurrying for them afterward, giving birth to a new generation of collectors of Camilleri’s dark humor and neatly twisted plots, along with the persistence of an inspector who can’t ever let himself be defeated by crime.

For complete review, see link: https://kingdombks.blogspot.com/2020/10/method-acting-or-method-murder-sicilian.html

While not the strongest of the Montalbano series, I nonetheless enjoyed The Sicilian Method. I find Salvo Montalbano's exchanges with his second in command, the womanizing Mimi Augello, amusing, and his solution to dealing with the body Mimi discovered as the novel began was highly entertaining. I'm also especially fond of Catarella, with his abrupt entrances and his malapropisms. I was saddened by the author's death in 2019, but look forward to the remaining titles in the series, and trust they will be as ably translated by Stephen Sartarelli as the previous books.

Much gratitude to Penguin Books and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Sicilian Method in return for my honest opinion.