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The Wings of the Sphinx (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery) Paperback – December 29, 2009

by Andrea Camilleri (Author), Stephen Sartarelli (Translator)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,275 ratings
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“You either love Andrea Camilleri or you haven’t read him yet. Each novel in this wholly addictive, entirely magical series, set in Sicily and starring a detective unlike any other in crime fiction, blasts the brain like a shot of pure oxygen. Aglow with local color, packed with flint-dry wit, as fresh and clean as Mediterranean seafood — altogether transporting. Long live Camilleri, and long live Montalbano.” A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window

Things are not going well for Inspector Salvo Montalbano. His relationship with Livia is once again on the rocks and—acutely aware of his age—he is beginning to grow weary of the endless violence he encounters. Then a young woman is found dead, her face half shot off and only a tattoo of a sphinx moth giving any hint of her identity. The tattoo links her to three similarly marked girls-all victims of the underworld sex trade-who have been rescued from the Mafia night-club circuit by a prominent Catholic charity. The problem is, Montalbano's inquiries elicit an outcry from the Church and the three other girls are all missing.
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Previous page
  1. Book 11 of 28
    An Inspector Montalbano Mystery
  2. Print length
    231 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Penguin Books
  5. Publication date
    December 29, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    5.06 x 0.64 x 7.71 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    9780143116608
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0143116608
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Bestseller Camilleri's sublime and darkly humorous 11th whodunit featuring Chief Insp. Salvo Montalbano (after 2009's August Heat) finds the 56-year-old Sicilian policeman in the midst of a serious crisis with his significant other, Livia. Montalbano is uncertain what he can and should do to repair the rift that has developed between them. Meanwhile, the inspector must tackle a difficult case—the gunshot murder of an attractive young woman whose nude body was left in a dump. As Montalbano and his team first attempt to identify the victim based on a butterfly tattoo on her left shoulder, they learn of a possible link to an influential Catholic charity. Soon they start to feel political pressure to steer the inquiry in a different direction. Camilleri balances his hero's personal and professional challenges perfectly and leaves the reader eager for more. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

It should come as no surprise to fans of Camilleri’s Salvo Montalbano series that the Sicilian inspector’s brow is now furrowed over the prospect of growing old. That’s hardly his only source of melancholy, though. There’s always plenty of storm clouds on the ever-brooding Salvo’s horizon, both personal (his foundering relationship with girlfriend Livia) and professional (the ubiquitous violence he encounters in his job and throughout society). All those forces come together here, when Salvo must solve the case of a young woman shot in the face, with only a tattoo as a clue to her identity. The tattoo’s trail leads to the sex trade and to three Eastern European women brought to Italy to work as dancers. Were the women rescued by a prominent Catholic charity, or is the charity a front for an even larger scam? Naturally, in the course of sorting that out, Salvo encounters resistance from the church and his bosses, as well as managing to endanger plans for a getaway with Livia—all of which cause more gray hairs to sprout. Camilleri’s sure hand with tragicomedy remains the distinguishing feature of this always entertaining series. --Bill Ott

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0143116606
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; F First Edition (December 29, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 231 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780143116608
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0143116608
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.9 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.06 x 0.64 x 7.71 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 2,275 ratings

About the author

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Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri

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Andrea Camilleri is the author of the spectacularly successful Montalbano mystery series and many other novels set in nineteenth-century Sicily. His Montalbano novels have been made into an Italian TV series.

Photo by T cc-by-3.0 (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
2,275 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Patto
5.0 out of 5 stars Insults & insights in Sicily
Reviewed in the United States on January 1, 2010
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I pounce on any new Montalbano mystery, and have to fight my husband to keep possession. Every book is a treat. The setting is Sicily, where we expect plenty of scandals and skullduggery - and Camilleri delivers.

In this book, Inspector Montalbano at 56 is having a crisis with his long-distance girlfriend Livia, while carrying on his usual lifestyle. He's consuming huge quantities of fabulous Sicilian food, making obscene wisecracks to superiors and stowing half-smoked cigarettes in his burnt-out jacket pocket. He's also digging too deeply into a case that's sure to bring trouble.

A twenty-something woman has been found naked in an illegal dump with her face shot off. The main clue to her identity is the Sphinx moth tattooed on her shoulder blade. Montalbano eventually connects the victim, who is Russian, to an association called Benevolence that help young women imported from other countries escape prostitution. Montalbano suspects that Benevolence is hiding bad things behind a good cause.

This is a political hot potato, since Benevolence naturally enough has attracted a lot of support from powerful people.

But it's not so much the crimes and their solutions that make Camilleri great fun to read. It's the wacky atmosphere in the police station, with Montalbano at war with the system and his desk sergeant Catarella garbling every phone message and mangling every name. And it's the drama and colorful language that seem to surround every human interaction.

Montalbano covers a lot of ground in his investigations, despite the fact that the government can't afford gasoline for the squad cars. Camilleri delights in portraying scandalous goings-on in Sicily.

Montalbano fans who like to reconstruct the inspector's favorite dishes will find detailed and daunting instructions for making 'mpanata di maiali on page 159.

I'd suggest that the Montalbano mysteries be consumed entire and in order for the fullest enjoyment.
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Jim Tenuto
4.0 out of 5 stars Va bene!
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2009
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Inspector Silvio Montalbano is feeling every one of his fifty-six years. In this eleventh installment in the Inspector Montalbano series, author Andrea Camilleri neither disappoints nor dazzles, instead turning in the journeyman performance expected. If anything, Montalbano, "meteoropathic" (he is profoundly influenced by the weather) inspector in Vigata, a fictional town in Siciliy, goes through his paces: his extravagant lunches at Enzo's, his tortuous conversations with Catarella, the desk sergeant who is the master of the malaprop, his walk to the end of the jetty to contemplate life, his whiskies on his veranda, his perplexing love-life with long time paramour Livia...it's all here. Yet fresh, nuanced.

Montalbano actually flees the scene of the crime that launches this book, the discovery of the body of a young woman, shot in the face and discarded in the city dump, naked. He can no longer deal with death visited upon the young. He is assailed, as are we all, with television's daily diet of death and dismemberment, war and violence visited on young and old. Montalbano still performs his amazing leaps of logic, his finely honed intuition often delivering the necessary bridge needed to solve a crime or determine a motive, yet in this book he leaves much of the work to his more-than-capable assistants, Mimi Augello and Fazio. His investigation wanders through a Catholic charity, private homes, the remains of a burned-out retail business, and prison.

As always, Camilleri creates a sense of place and sets it firmly in time. Through Montalbano he takes his obligatory swipes at Silvio Berlusconi, the web of the powerful who seem to trample through every investigation, and the Sicilian bureaucracy,

While the series isn't great literature, it is a great series. Camilleri keeps his characters fresh, building on them in each subsequent work. You feel what Montalbano feels, the frustration, the powerlessness, the emotions of growing older and wiser but no less effective against the powers that be.

When we visited Italy a couple of years ago I wanted to purchase the first book in the series, The Shape of Water (La forma dell' acqua) in Italian. When I walked into a bookstore in Rome and asked for the title, the clerk beamed and shouted "Mafia! Mafia!" Camilleri's a well-known and respected writer in Italy, with the series turned into a television program.
33 people found this helpful
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Neev
5.0 out of 5 stars Another Winner for Camilleri
Reviewed in the United States on October 13, 2010
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Camilleri has done it again with "Wings of the Sphinx." The mystery is as complex and Montalbano as wise to the ways of his fellow Sicilians as ever.

Camilleri manages to blend ancient Sicily with its modern problems and delights, but then a murder occurs in an unexpected way and the modern and ancient collide. And, of course, under modern motivations lie human nature, as old as Sicily itself.

Montalbano continues to brood over his age, his girlfriend, Livia, and their years-on relationship, and the layers=deep administration with which he must deal. It is all very familiar in a most unfamiliar way. And the mystery at the heart of this books is as dark and dense as ever.

My only disappointment is that I tend to stay up late to finish his books and then have to wait too long for the next one.
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Top reviews from other countries

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Maria Leticia Ferreira Samara
5.0 out of 5 stars Não existe livro sem estrelas do Camilleri
Reviewed in Brazil on October 23, 2021
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Não existe livro sem estrelas do Camilleri
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rbertrk
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in Canada on November 26, 2019
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Thanks for fast shipping. Once again, Inspector Montalbano must investigate a murder. This time the body is a naked woman with only one identifying mark--a small tattoo of a butterfly on her shoulder blade. Of course, even without the murder there are things that keep the police busy, including the case of the kidnapping victim who may only be off with his girlfriend while his wife worries. The usual wonderfully vivid cast of characters makes up for the thin plot. I don't know why this series is so enthralling, but it is.
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Graham of Watton
5.0 out of 5 stars Hugely enjoyable
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 6, 2016
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'The Wings of the Sphinx' is book 11 in the wonderful crime series set in Sicily and featuring Inspector Montalbano. If you haven't previously read any of these books, there may be a marginal benefit to reading them in order, but it's not necessary - each one is a self-contained story.'The Wings of the Sphinx' starts the same way that many of the other stories do, namely with the discovery of a murder victim. In this case the naked body of a young woman is found on a refuse dump. She has been shot in the face and is unrecognisable - her only distinguishing mark is the tattoo of a moth on her shoulder blade. Montalbano arranges for a photo of the tattoo to be broadcast on local TV and appeals for people to come forward if they recognise it. The public response suggests that there are several young girls, all with an identical tattoo on the same shoulder. However, are these girls connected in any way and why has the victim been killed?
'The Wings of the Sphinx' is written with Camilleri's usual style and wit and features all the key characters form the other books in the series who readers have come to know and love. It's hugely enjoyable stuff.
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Sandi Cooke
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in Australia on August 14, 2014
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Easy read and enjoyable, each story has a different twist
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Judith Adams
4.0 out of 5 stars Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 18, 2023
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As usual, funny and clever. Dont read when you are hungry!
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