The Wings of the Sphinx by Andrea CamilleriI think the best way to describe this series is as a cozy with cursing. Cozy mysteries typically are heavy with character development, and have no violence, sex or cursing. This one is a cozy-mystery Sicilian style. The violence happens off-page and the colorful language is on.
Inspector Montalbano is in his fifties and is a bit tired. The highlight of his day isn’t going to work, or going home, it’s going to lunch at his favorite trattoria. Yet while enjoying his favorite meals his mind is constantly working as he puzzles through the latest mysteries to occur in his part of Sicily. Filled with deduction, interesting characters and relationships, and the politics unique and ever-present in the region, Camilleri creates a memorable police procedural.
In The Wings of the Sphinx the nude body of a 20-something year old woman is found in a popular illegal dump site. The gunshot wound to the face that killed her also destroyed any chance of identifying her. The only lead to her identity is the moth, a Sphinx moth, tattoo on her left shoulder blade. Illegal immigration, shady benevolent organizations and politics collide while the police search for a killer.
