The Patience of the Spider

I should be finishing 2484 catching upon TV and Films experienced during August and the first days of September but as it continues to rain all day, justifying the wicket prepared and the approach of Durham in their dramatic and wonderful win against Sussex yesterday afternoon, I am going to tackle the latest book read in the series of Montalbano novels created by Andrea Camilleri - the Patience of the Spider.

I was inspired to return to the series after watching an excellent programme about present day Sicily as Francesco da Mosto completed the tour of his homeland Italy Top to toe. Checking up his name on the BBC I player I decide to watch again the BBC Promenade concert which commences with the new tenor heartthrob from Malta Joseph Calleja singing popular and less known Verdi arias after the Overture, The Force of Destiny played by the Italian Verdi orchestra under one of the few leading conductors who happens to be a woman and from China.

The Patience of the Spider is a clever tale where familiarity because of the TV production helped to appreciate its ingenuity. A young woman is kidnapped but the circumstances arouse the suspicions of Montalbano from the outset when at first the motor scooter she used was found in an unusual place and facing in the wrong direction from which he expected. Investigation of the site brings him into contact with the young wife of a disabled man who finds additional income to that from selling fresh eggs by entertaining men with passion. Montalbano finds a way to keep the woman’s secondary income from the attention of colleagues and enjoys sucking a raw egg or two as his reward, something which I know some enjoy but has never appealed to me.

The victim is a dutiful daughter with a clever young man who wants to become a policeman when he graduates from his law studies and who Montalbano comes to admire because he too is puzzled by aspects of the case and the behaviour of the victim before she disappeared. The first big clue comes when he reveals that shortly beforehand they had become lovers at her instigation after resisting his advances during their time together.

Most kidnapping have only one of two motives in mind. The major one is money but in this instance the father has no funds. The other is sexual where often the victim is found dad. There have been “celebrated” cases in the USA and in Belgium recently where individuals have been kept prisoners for a decade and more for sex use purpose and in the USA instance the man in question was found within the past days hanged in his cell despite half hour checks suggesting complicity worse.

It is when Montalbano discovers why the family has no means to pay the ransom and which is also why the mother has become an invalid incurable from a disease of the emotions and the mind that eh begins to unravel the mystery. The brother of the woman is one of those characters Montalbano hates most, an individual who preys on the ties and emotions of others from self interest. Under threat of life the family, the husband and his brother a doctor, had raised the sum required, and the decision meant that when the family business commenced to fail because of changing market conditions, they lacked the funds to keep going through the difficult times and it had failed. The brother who by this time had become successful primarily through his party political contact had refused to help out, failing to repay his debt.

Through skilful use of the media by the kidnappers pubic pressure is exerted on the brother in law especially when a recording of the girl’s plea to a TV station is released together with a photograph of her imprisonment. Montalbano arranges for the photograph to be enlarged because there is something which he finds puzzling but does not reveal to the reader until the mystery beings to be solved

The brother in law does in fact raise the requested funds and leaves the money notes as instructed and is then shocked to find that he is accused of betrayal when after the girl is released the kidnappers state that the ransom was not paid. Salvo makes a quick dash to the location where the money was said by the man’s lawyer to have been dropped and there he finds the container but instead of bank notes he finds cut newspaper which confirms in the public and the official mind that the brother n law is a rat and his social standing as well as political future is in ruins.

Montalbano however works out what really happened after the victim’s boyfriends informs that the girl ahs rejected him wanting no further contact. Salvo establishes that the girl had prior to the kidnapping arranged to leave Italy to work as a missionary coinciding with the death of her mother. The ransom was in fact paid but has now been distributed to a wide range of International and national good causes. Montalbano has his own sense of justice, natural justice one might say and keeps quiet once the girl with the assistance of the uncle admit what they had done.

The book title is about the intricate way in which spiders prepare their webs and hide waiting for their prey to come for the bait. The relationship between Salvo and Livia who has used holiday to care for him after the shooting in the previous volume remains difficult like a long married couple and he admits to jealous over the friendship she has with the notorious Mimi although he is now married and obsessed with their first child. Livia accuses Salvo of lack of concern about the kidnapping although he is officially not on duty but called in to help out because of the publicity. Another contention is when he agrees to become the godfather to the new child of the delinquent son of his housekeeper. He makes amends by agreeing to become godparent to Mimi’s child with her..

The confinement convalescence has meant food restriction with the housekeeper keeping away while Livia is there and Livia although does her best fails to measure up the standards which the house keeper sets. They have also not been able to go out for meals as much as he would have liked. When he does go to his favourite Trattoria with Livia his appetite fails because of the of quarrelling and he pushes away a simple starter of spaghetti all’aglio e olio - garlic oil pepper and parsley and he initially decline the fish dish which he had started to savour as its aroma emanated from the kitchen out of peek until Livia overruled him a sea bream - Sicilian olio.

Returning home he is jealous of Livia natural concern on learning that Mimi is in hospital with broken ribs. He rejects the offer she makes to warm up a dish and goes to fridge for a prepared dish of Ragusan caciocavallo covered in green and black olives. Her perks up when taken for a meal and find the woman of the house is a excellent cook preparing baconiglo all’agrodole which is rabbit dish which he says is best cooked one day and eaten the day because the flavour and aroma increases after and using a ratatouille type of stew with aubergine, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives vinegar, olive oil, and anchovies. The starter was a cavatuna in tomato sauce - a crushed pasta .

We also learn something from a visit to the grocers where he purchases green and black olives, caciocavallo cheese fresh bread covered with a form of sesame seed and a jar of Trapanese pesto which is later explained as a sauce made with uncooked crushed tomatoes, fine chopped blanched almonds garlic, olive oil and black pepper and finally to celebrate solving the case to his personal satisfaction and the decision that he will restart his relationship with Livia as the had been beginning he goes out and orders everything seafood antipasto, fish soup, boiled octopus dressed with olive oil and lemon followed by four mullets two grilled and two fried an then an explosive kick of a liqueur and where he had two. As mine host commented he was back on good form. Indeed he was. Tonight, Saturday I look forward to a new series entitled Young Montalbano.