Theme:
The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri, sees the Inspector investigating a death from natural causes in suspicious circumstances. It’s slow to get going but a good plot with plenty of social commentary.
Summary:
Silvio Lupanello, a big-shot in Vigàta, is found dead in his car with his pants around his knees. The car happens to be parked in a part of town used by prostitutes and drug dealers, and as the news of his death spreads, the rumors begin. Enter Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Vigàta’s most respected detective.
Famous Quotes:
“One day I saw that my friend had put a bowl, a cup, a teapot, and a square milk carton on the edge of a well, had filled them all with water, and was looking at them attentively. “ ‘What are you doing?’ I asked him. And he answered me with a question in turn. “ ‘What shape is water?’ “ ‘Water doesn’t have any shape!’ I said, laughing. ‘It takes the shape you give it.”
“In grammar school he’d had an old priest as his religion teacher. “Truth is light,” the priest had said one day.
Montalbano, never very studious, had been a mischievous pupil, always sitting in the last row.
“So that must mean that if everyone in the family tells the truth, they save on the electric bill.”
“The quickest way to make people forget a scandal is to talk about it as much as possible, on television, in the papers, and so on. Over and over you flog the same dead horse, and pretty soon people start getting fed up. ‘They’re really dragging this out!’ they say. ‘Haven’t we had enough?’ After a couple of weeks the saturation effect is such that nobody wants to hear another word about that scandal.”
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