Another brilliant read - Rated 
Another brilliant read from Andrea Camilleri. Action packed and laugh out loud funny. Looking forward to the next one!
More than a detective novel - Rated
Thanks to Amazon I found an author with a sense humour I like. This particular book also dealt with the issue of child traffiking in a powerful way.
Dark and Unsettling - Rated 
Camilleri is not afraid to let Inspector Montalbano age and in this book he really is showing it. The story opens with Montalbano making an appointment to hand in his resignation, which luckily for us, never comes to fruition.
This theme of endings and exits is a continual undercurrent throughout the narrative however. Montalbano's relationship with Livia is in peril, his favourite cafe is closing. The world is changing around him and not for the better.
He comes up against illegal traffic in immigrant children and his inability to be on the ball costs him dearly more than once. The issue of his fitness for purpose is left open ended as the book closes leaving us to wonder if he will return and in what way.
One of the darker of the series but none the worse for that.
Rounding the mark - Rated
A great book. I bought it for my mum for Christmas, it was delivered in good time and I read it afterwards. Very enjoyable.
Montalbano 007 - Rated
This book is number 7 in the Montalbano series. 007 might be more apt, though. For the intrepid Inspector plays the all-action hero as well as the all-divining intelligence when bringing his crooks to justice.
Despite the leavening humour and some classic Catarella malapropism (his ability to murder language is described as 'Catarellese'), this particular story features a more embittered and sadistic Montalbano to the one we've got used to. He seems to feel the world's weight on his shoulders here, troubled as he is with human-trafficking, loan-sharking and, generally, the stinking underbelly of a sordid humanity: 'The world's become too evil', is the conclusion of an eye-witness that could equally be his own. For the most part, Salvo operates in defiance of his team and relations with his trusty deputy Mimì Augello have never been cooler.
Even Stephen Sarterelli's usually assured translation seems different: incomplete, even Catrellese in its English (Montalbano 'gives into rage' instead of giving in to - so much for phrase verbs!), while expressions like 'Avast!' do not have the usual annotation and leave me, for one, bemused.
So, rather too much James Bond and not enough vintage Camilleri for my liking, but Rounding the Mark is still, ultimately, Camilleri: never less than entertaining.
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