Game of Mirrors

Commissario Montalbano, Book 18

By: Andrea Camilleri

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano novels have become an international sensation, with fans eagerly awaiting each new installment. In this eighteenth book of the New York Times best-selling series, someone is toying with Italy's favorite detective.

Inspector Montalbano and his colleagues are stumped when two bombs explode outside empty warehouses - one of which is connected to a big-time drug dealer. Meanwhile the alluring Liliana Lombardo is trying to seduce the inspector over red wine and arancini. Between pesky reporters, amorous trysts, and cocaine kingpins, Montalbano feels as if he's being manipulated on all fronts. That is until the inspector himself becomes the prime suspect in an unspeakably brutal crime.

©2015 Andrea Camilleri (P)2015 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Very Good until the gruesome murder

The title says it all. The gruesome murder at the end ruined my enjoyment of this book so much that I couldn’t finish it. Stopped immediately.

Good, not great

I fear these books - and Montalbano himself - are getting stale. They are still entertaining but very predictable. The quaintness of Cat’s “personally in person” (with a Brooklyn accent) is wearing thin. But still the Inspector and I persevere and I’ve already downloaded the next audiobook.

Worth a listen, but not the best Montalbano

This outing ticks most of the Montalbano boxes, but leaves one with a hastily ended, rather perfunctory finish. Good narration as usual, still needs work vis the pronunciation of Italian or Sicilian words. Overall enjoyable and worth it.

Getting seriously two-dimensional

It seems like the author is starting to fill pages with well-worn behaviors of his characters, now becoming boring. The relationship with Livia has suffered the same fate and doesn’t even play a dramatic role. Montalbano has almost no emotional depth, to the point of being almost sociopathic. This book has the feel of having been written simply to fulfill a contract.