“Montalban’s conscience”, a collection of posthumous stories about the commissioner

One is inclined to think from the beginning that Salvo Montalbano is depreciated literary territory, especially after riccardinoa title that reached Spanish bookstores three years after the death of the author Andrea Camilleri (Porto Empedocle, Agrigento, Sicily, 1925-Rome, 2019), and which showed the end of the curator.

With great patience, the Sicilian writer kept the manuscript in a drawer in 2005 to later deliver it—with instructions—to the editor Elvira Sellerio: her publishing house was to publish it after Camilleri’s death; Until that happens, the charismatic police chief of the imaginary Vigàta is happy to continue his investigations. However, the initial preemption loses its weight when a new volume of Montalban’s adventures reaches the hands of readers, even if it is posthumous and not designed by Camilleri, as Montalbano’s conscience (Salamander editions).

After that, the fan once again surrenders to the charms of the officials, because the reunion is always worth it: he is in an environment so recognizable and familiar that discomfort is impossible; on the contrary, no one refuses to get to know a good friend more deeply, despite his flaws.

The book brings together four stories that previously appeared in collective themed anthologies promoted by Sellerio between 2012 and 2018, plus two more: rear windowpublished in sequels in 2007 in a free neighborhood newspaper in Rome, Il Nasone di Patri, which is an explicit homage to the legendary Hitchcock film; and The mayor’s sonappeared in 2008 in a non-saleable edition exclusively for bank clients, whose plot four years later the author saved as the starting point of a novel a voice in the night.

In any case, the six stories are a wonderful series of stories that offer intelligent entertainment and delicious nuances about Montalbano’s personality.