The Publisher Says: Winning fans in Europe and America for their dark sophistication and dry humor, Andrea Camilleri's crime novels are classics of the genre. Set once again in Sicily, The Patience of the Spider pits Inspector Montalbano against his greatest foe yet: the weight of his own years. Still recovering from the gunshot wound he suffered in Rounding the Mark, he must overcome self-imposed seclusion and waxing self-doubt to penetrate a web of hatred and secrets in pursuit of the strangest culprit he's ever hunted. A mystery un any other, this emotionally taut story brings the Montalbano saga to a captivating crossroads.

My Review: Montalbano's near-fatal wound in the previous book is the reason this story could work at all. This is Sicily, after all, and revenge tales must be told. This one, all the best revenge stories (eg, The Count of Monte Cristo, Gone Girl), is a slow-burn simmering of malefactors and miscreants in the deep waters of their indifference's costs to innocent souls around them.

Since Montalbano is recuperating from an undeniable wound, he is the only one fit to pursue the consequences of wounding so very deep it saps the will to live. He is his crusty self, irking Livia (come from Genoa to nurse him back to health) and worrying Fazio and Mimì into making painful mistakes in their attempts to fill his inspector-shoes; baiting the oblivious Catarella (a musical-comedy Sicilian if there ever was one, and a character that could only be written by uber-Sicilian Camilleri with impunity) and insufferable, smug Latte-with-an-S-at-the-end (as Catarella calls Lattes, secretary to the regional boss over Montalbano). So far, so familiar.

But it's the down-time that Montalbano is forced to take that is his primary tool in unraveling this operatic plot. He thinks, as he always does, through the parameters of the puzzle a penniless bore's daughter's kidnapping presents. He has the leisure, enforced by dictates from Lattes, that allows his synesthetic imagination to record quite forcefully impressions that, in the end, form a pattern...a web...and there's just no doubt that Salvo has saved the day with his solution. He makes a judgment call. He is, in my never-remotely humble opinion, absolutely correct in his call. And after all, isn't that why we read series mysteries? The sleuth solves the crime...satisfying enough...the author provides us with the clues...Camilleri certainly does that...and then Right is Done.

Un in real life, sadly.

It's all too clear that Montalbano's appeal is catholic; many who read the novels do so for the gorgeous foods...rabbit simmered in caponata, swoon!...and still others do so for the intricacies of the puzzles. A broad tent, this Camilleri spreads.

I read these novels for those reasons, and more. I love the small details, a Simenon "hard novel" or a Sciascia historical fiction, a dead shopkeeper with a significant name, Livia's conflicted glance in the airport, the uncle and the others having no names; the ones in plain sight, the ones that tell a much subtler, infinitely more personal tale. Camilleri put himself in his books as Hitchcock did in his movies. He is there if you look away, he looms if your back turns just slowly enough, Camilleri newly dead haunts his fifteen-year-old fictions because he put his spirit in our entertainment and never once demanded that we look at him.

What a wily old dramaturg he really was. If anyone lived up to the traditional birthday wish, "Cent'anni!" I do so wish it had been he.borrowed returned27 s Justo Martiañez447 165

3/5

Al bueno de Camilleri esta vez lo he visto venir casi desde el principio. Trama bastante previsible y eso penaliza un poco el libro.

Nos encontramos ante un Montalbano en proceso de cambio y búsqueda interior. Herido en la entrega anterior, nos encontramos ante un comisario con dudas. Dudas sobre su su salud, dudas quizá sobre sobre sus ambiciones y sobre el curso que debe tomar su carrera. Dudas sobre hacia donde deben ir su relación con Livia (o quizá no, siempre aplicado la sentencia de "ni contigo, ni sin ti" y todos contentos). Hasta dudas sobre sus capacidades de trasegar los platos que tanto le gustan y que va degustando de trattoria en trattoria.....no os preocupéis que recupera el apetito.

De lo que no tiene dudas es de que a veces la Justicia es ciega y que quizá en algunos momentos aplicar las leyes a rajatabla, daña irremediablemente a personas que no se lo merecen. Desentrañar la verdad, resolver el misterio. Desenmascarar al culpable y mirar hacia otro lado, a veces es lo más justo: esa es la Justicia de Montalbano, lo que lo hace diferente y tan entrañable.

Que luego sea un poco machista, maleducado y vacilón, es lo de menos o al menos a mi no me afecta demasiado.

Vaya, no he contado nada de la trama. No hay sangre, no hay muertos. Hay un secuestro y una familia que sufre mucho. Una familia que no tiene recursos para afrontar el rescaten que piden para liberar a la muchacha. Una familia que lo perdió todo a manos de un familiar golfo y corrupto. Estos son los mimbres para resolver el misterio, que sólo Montalbano va a saber urdir.

No creo que sea la mejor entrega de la saga. Seguimos.30 s6 comments Metodi Markov1,487 363

??? ? ????, ???? ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??????? ???????????? ??????? ????? ??????? ??????????.
Autor del comentario:
=================================