Hunting Season by Andrea Camilleri

Published by Picador in 2015

Best known for his Inspector Montalbano books, this is something quite different. It’s older than is usual for a book to review but, having read and enjoyed the entire Montalbano series (twice), I was hoping for something in the same vein.

Although it’s recognisably Camilliari’s style, it lacks the affection and humour evident in his later books featuring the characters many of us discovered via the TV series.

Set in Sicily (of course) in 1880, the story opens with the arrival in Vigata of a stranger. Little by little his story unfolds and with it, stories of others’ pasts are brought into the open.

Long remembered grudges, past loves,  infidelity, revenge and eventually murder are served up with a side order of lust.

A well written book, but not one for me. I found the large number of characters and the convoluted plot didn’t hold my interest and, far from being “entertaining and moving” as described on the cover, I found it rather depressing and unnecessarily vulgar.