This has nothing to do with South Asia but in an attempt to mix up subjects I’m sharing this recent piece I wrote about crime fiction.  Also see these related pieces on crime fiction:  “Mehmet Murat Somer’s Turkish Delight Mysteries” and “Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz”. 

One of my guilty pleasures is that I read police procedurals to relax. Though they are certainly not high art, these novels are paradoxically comforting– despite the violence they contain– since the reader knows that the mystery will be solved in the end. This perhaps explains why detective stories–of which police procedurals are a subgenre– continue to be one of the most popular literary genres. Agatha Christie, for example, is one of the world’s bestselling authors.

Sometime during the pandemic, I discovered Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano mysteries. At a time when we were all stuck at home, these novels allowed me to travel vicariously to Sicily. The books are full of local color. In particular–since Inspector Montalbano is a gourmand– they are full of descriptions of local cuisine.

The series often covers the connections between crime and politics–the Mafia is often involved in the plots. In a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Camilleri spoke about how he combined the detective novel with social commentary. He said: “In many crime novels, the events seem completely detached from the economic, political and social context in which they occur… In my books, I deliberately decided to smuggle into a detective novel a critical commentary on my times. This also allowed me to show the progression and evolution in the character of Montalbano”. Continue reading Review: Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano Mysteries