Review: Hunting Season

On New Year's Day in 1880, a steam-driven packet boat from Palermo delivers a mysterious stranger to the little village of Vigata, where everyone knows each other's secrets. His presence greatly upsets 90-year-old Don Filippo, whose body is soon found in the surf, an apparent suicide. Then Don Filippo's mentally challenged son is found poisoned by mushrooms--even though he was a mushroom expert. Is it just a coincidence that, long ago, the new arrival's father had his throat cut in Vigata, a crime that was never solved?

You also need to know that Vigata, the imaginary Sicilian port that's the setting for Hunting Season--a deftly lean, addictive mystery from 88-year-old Andrea Camilleri, Italian noir superstar--is the setting, too, of Camilleri's contemporary Inspector Montalbano series. At the center of it all is the young stranger, always at the right place at the right time, resisting the overtures of the lusty Signora Clelia while befriending everyone with his saving skills and advice. Secret love and filial vengeance keep this hotbed of a town simmering as the members of the Peluso family begin dying mysteriously, one by one.

Figuring out who the central characters are in this dark Sicilian comedy is half the fun, and Camilleri leads you down several false trails before the real plot begins to emerge. Characters you think are marginal will surprise you; ones you find offensive become endearing. Comments you originally thought funny turn out to be true. Far-fetched curses are fulfilled. Treachery, greed and true friendship are just a scratch beneath the surface. Teeming with dozens of earthy rural-types, crackling with hotheaded Italian insults, every combustible scene bubbles with emotions of every variety.

More of a darkly comic Italian revenge noir than an actual mystery, the fiendishly clever plot builds with a cool undercurrent of suspense as the two surviving possible masterminds both fall in love with the same person. Camilleri is a consummate artist, recently longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Prize, who has his craft down cold and effortlessly plays with it, toying with alternate choices, like a playful driver twisting the wheel this way and that way, swerving across the line, fooling his passengers into screams, repeatedly giving the reader that delicious, familiar chill of doubt. --Nick DiMartino

Shelf Talker: Camilleri places a darkly comic Sicilian tale of revenge in the same town as his popular Inspector Montalban mystery series--but more than a century in the past.

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