The Potter's Field

A body cut into thirty pieces is found in a clay field outside Vigata, a discovery that points Commissario Montalbano toward both Mafia symbolism and the possibility of deliberate misdirection. The thirteenth Montalbano novel interweaves the detective's investigation with his ongoing management of his complicated personal life and the office dynamics of the Vigata police station, which require nearly as much diplomatic skill as the murder. Andrea Camilleri's series is as much character study as procedural.

Grover Gardner narrates the series with the relaxed Mediterranean authority that Montalbano's world demands, capturing the Sicilian commissioner's combination of sensuous enjoyment of life and focused professional intelligence. The CWA International Dagger recognizes a series that delivers genuine literary pleasure alongside its crime fiction satisfactions. Gardner's unhurried delivery is well matched to Camilleri's prose, which treats food, landscape, and human contradiction with equal attention.