The Overnight Kidnapper

Description

Montalbano and crew get run to the four corners by crimes that make no sense: abductions that last a few hours, an act of arson, a missing person. The slow accretion of facts accelerate when the bodies start to fall.

Description

"The day gets off to a bad start for Montalbano: while trying to break up a fight on Marinella beach, he hits the wrong man and is stopped by the Carabinieri. When he finally gets to the office, the inspector learns about a strange abduction: a woman was abducted, drugged, and then released unharmed a few hours later. A few days later, the same thing happens again. The only link between the two events is that both women are thirty years old and work in a bank. Alongside this investigation, Montalbano has to deal with an arson case. A shop that sells household appliances has burned down, and its owner, Marcello Di Carlo, seems to have vanished into thin air. Has he run off with his lover after a holiday in the Canary Islands? Is he fleeing from his creditors, or was he murdered by the mafia for not paying their protection money? At first this seems like a trivial case, but a third abduction--yet again of a girl who works in a bank--and the discovery of a body bring up new questions. Whose body is it? And where has Di Carlo's secret lover gone?"--

First Sentence

At half past five that morning—give or take a few minutes—a fly that had long been stuck to the windowpane as though dead suddenly opened its wings, rubbed them together to clean them, then took flight and, a moment later, changed direction and landed on the bedside table.

Subjects