I must use some credit with Amazon to buy the Wallander books, or at least some of them. First however I will read the Montalbano Books after the discovery that the BBC Four has commenced a second series after the first 9 episodes were shown between February and April this year and achieved ratings averaging 700000. It would be surprising if as with Wallander the BBC did not commission English. Language versions of this excellent series in time. Some twenty or more novels and scripts have been created since 1984, some of which are yet to be translated into the English Language. The BBC series is following the Italian showings which commenced in 1994 with two episodes followed by a similar number in 2000 and 2001. Then in 2002 four episodes were made into TV episodes with two others in 2005, 2006, and the four more in 2008. There was then a gap of three years until 2008 when three more episodes were aired bringing the total to 21. Six of these were scripts without books.
Inspector Montalbano
is much more outgoing but as clever Detective as Wallander. The episode experienced on Saturday evening has a different title from the book, the seventh written and called Round the Mark and which I have ordered and will be delivered on Wednesday along with the other first 11 written between 1994 2008. The BBC title is Turning Point. This is because the episode reflect a potential major change in the life of the Detective.
In this episode Montalbano has decided to resign because of a scandal affecting a mainland force in which it is said evidence was fabricated and suspects beaten up. He is appalled by the behaviour colleagues on the mainland tarnishes all their reputations, especially after similar problem involving the police forced centred on Napoli.
As with the first BBC series the series depends on the interaction between Montalbano and his three colleagues, his deputy Mimi Augello, the former playboy now married to Beba (Beatrice di Leo) who is expecting their first child and the next in command Guisppe Fazio who they refer to as Fazio and the desk officer and general factotum Agatino Caterella who is khack handed and a figure of fun but is also a very serious and dedicated officer with hidden talents which are allowed to emerge from time to time. It is Mimi who guesses what Montalbano has decided to resign and berates him accusing him of betraying his colleagues who are also honest and dedicated.
Montalbano goes off for a swim in a bay near to his house to reflect on what has happened and bumps into floating body which he brings ashore and then lies close to it exhausted. An elderly couple on holiday with a borrowed gun attempt to arrest Montalbano thinking he is a murderer and when having called the station Mini and Fazio arrive the man hits Montalbano on the head with the pistol knocking him down before he can be restrained. The couple then appear on local TV making disparaging remarks about a lack of law and order in Sicily because of its reputation as the home of the Mafia. Montalbano incensed ensures that action is taken on discovering that weapon is not licensed.
Usually he presses the Coroner for the results of the autopsy but this time it is the Coroner who approaches the Inspector charging him with a lack of concern assuming the body is but one of the hundreds of immigrants washed up dead. The body was dead before being into the water for a week or more and because of the current the face cannot be identified but there are indications the limbs had been tied and then cast into the sea at point to make it look as if it was under failed migrant.
The detective is then called to the harbour after a boat with illegal immigrants has been apprehended and Salvo sees a young boy of Middle Eastern appearance perhaps eight or night running off. He approaches the boy and although they speak different languages he is able to establish confidence and reunites the boy with a woman with several other children. The woman is delighted to see the child and then appears to claim her leg is broken as she falls. Later the Inspector finds there is no record of her at the hospital and the ambulance driver confirms that on arrival she said she was OK and had walked with difficulty into the hospital casualty department. This Salvo is told was likely to have been a ploy as there are no security cameras within the hospital which meant the woman would then leave with the children whereas she would have been taken from the harbour and formally interviewed by the police/immigration authorities.
He discussed this situation by phone with his mainland woman friend Livia Burlando played by Kathrina Bohm and also as a voice by Claudia Catani, presumably when the actress left the series or was unable to be filmed. It is assumed that the gaps in this 12 year lasting series is because one or more of the actors was otherwise committed.
In this instance the concerns, shared by the woman friend, are soon realised when an immigrant boy is found dead the subject of a hit and run. He finds this is the same boy who he persuaded to return to the woman he believed was the boy’s mother, A local farmer who witnessed part of what happened at a distance and partially unsighted because of a wall suggests that the boy was deliberately run down.
Montalbano arranges for a colleague to make a mock up of the face from the body in the water, reminding of similar action in the film Gorky Park. Catarella brings the computer generated face suggesting it is that of a wanted criminal. Mimi disagrees about the similarly of likeness. His position appears confirmed when the local Police commander says that the man was buried by his widow a year before.
What the Inspector is able to uncover is a horrific example of child abduction and bringing to Italy for use as spare body parts, to be sold to be paedophiles or for slave labour. The Inspector is helped by journalist introduced to him by the Coroner who is investigating the trade and by Ingrid a female friend who arrives at the station when invited to have dinner only to find the policeman has forgotten but then sees the photo of the dead man who she identified as the man previously believed dead and who taken her for sex to rooms he was using at an otherwise deserted former Tuna Factory close to the beach where the body was found.
It is here that the Inspector and the force lay in wait when getting info of the arrival of next fishing boat filled with young male migrants. The Inspector intervenes when he sees one of the boys beaten for protesting at being given an injection/taking of a blood sample. The children are held at the centre for medical examination and grading for onward selling on the mainland. Montalbano is shot while rescuing the boy killing the gang leader in the process. The episode ends with Montalbano convalescing in a mountain top country treat used by his father and where apart from Mimi who brings him there the only other person involved is a neighbour and former friend of his father who has arranged for the place to be ready for him with bedding and food. He is still considering his future.
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