Monday, September 14, 2009

Grace note

"After turning the key in the lock, he had, for all intents and purposes, opened the door onto nothingness: a horrific explosion, triggered by an ingenious device linking the door to an explosive charge, literally pulverized the house, the businessman, and his wife, Giuseppa née Tagliafico. Investigations, the newsman added, were proving difficult, since Mr. Brancato had a clean record and did not appear in any way involved with the Mafia.

"Montalbano turned off the television and started whistling Schubert's Eighth, the `Unfinished.' It came out splendidly, he didn't miss a note."

Andrea Camilleri, The Terra-Cotta Dog

© Peter Rozovsky 2009

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4 Comments:

Blogger Paul D Brazill said...

Vey nice, indeed.

September 14, 2009  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

You can feel the sarcastic, knowing grin in the last sentence of the first paragraph.

Among other things, this must be one of the sharpest invocations of music in any fiction. (A quibbler might suggest that the joke is on the piece's title rather than on the music itself, and he would be right. But the hell with him. The passage works.)

I like Camilleri more and more the more I read an reread him.

September 14, 2009  
Blogger Kiwicraig said...

I am going to have to read me some Camilleri, methinks...

September 14, 2009  
Blogger Peter Rozovsky said...

I endorse that suggestion. I've generally liked the more recent Montalbano novels better than the earlier ones, but this one, the second in the series, was sharper and funnier than I remembered from the first time I read it. I'm ready to put Camilleri in my personal pantheon.

September 14, 2009  

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