The first of four new episodes series nine to British TV was broadcast last Saturday week with a new Livia someone taller than the original who disappeared after a number of series so that we heard only her voice. I do not think the new actress was a great success and interestingly only her voice is heard again in the episode Saturday past although the story had another woman who Salvo became interested as it central character. I am ahead of myself. In the first episode Salvo hears Livia Calling out the name Carlo in a waking dream and with words which have a distinctive sexual context. He then keeps bumping into men called Carlo including a waiter a at restaurant and where he requests a change. As will be expected in relation to Livia there is an innocent explanation for the name, .her dress designer with a feature at the rear of her dress she does not want. A contrived amusement..
In the main story of Miss Angelica there is a robbery involving a couple of swingers celebrating the 5th wedding anniversary at a sea coast home where they are gassed to sleep with their cars then taken and their apartment in town broken into and everything stolen of great value. An anonymous letter is sent announcing a second, third and fourth robberies as the episode progresses. The second concerns Miss Angelica which has the same pattern as before except that the young woman pleads with Salvo not to disclose where she was staying which he agrees only for another anonymous letter to be sent to the local chief complaining that only half the story had been disclosed by the Inspector in his report. However he is able to talk his way out of the situation saying that he did say the car had been stolen and the property in her town residence but nothing had been taken from where she had been staying.
I cannot remember the order of the next two incidents but in one the stake out at another of the friends of the first two victims is foiled, friends who all know each other and have the knowledge of movements and locations, one of the three robbers is wounded in the shoot out as they escape but later is found dead his wound infected and the man then shot from fear if he went for treatment he would reveal his partners.
In the next situation Salvo is joined by Miss Angelica on a surveillance and nothing happens and by then the two have become lovers despite the difference in ages, not the first time this has happened.
Then in the third completed robbery this of someone in the same block as the first couple, a man who is not one of the friends but later transpires to have been a loan shark over a long period as well as jeweller. He is then found to have committed suicide. Salvo plays his hunches and discovers first that Miss Angelica is the sister of a man he has met when seeking where in the block the first couple are resident, after one of Catarella’s great name mix-ups. He has discovered video games quickly becoming an addict on the works computer. Salvo backs a hunch and Catarella searches the on line local paper archives with an article on the death of their parents either accident or suicide in a car following the father getting into great difficulties from a loan shark. They had set out on revenge and hired the robbers who had mafia connection with the first robberies a blind and with the taken goods stored safely for returning when the main task was completed which was to gain access to the record kept by the loan shark of a his customers who acquired huge debts. Angelica is shot before Salvo can protect her after a tip off because of her decision to attend the stake out with him knowing that this was a set up for him to be killed and which she had prevented.. It all therefore ends well in that the robberies are solved, the other robbers identified and presumed brought to just, but also Angelica and her brother would be prosecuted for their part in the situation that developed.. However I cannot remember all the ins and out so that connections and explanations have been missed which make the episode an integrated whole.
Livia has visited to attend the 20th birthday of Françoise, from the Snack Thief adopted by Mimi Augello’s sister and who they had planned to adopt and where they would have married with Livia moving to Sicily has this happened and where Françoise had said he wanted to be a policeman when he grew and was growing restless at University
I found the second episode of the ninth series Hall of Mirrors. more powerful because of the ending, Salvo is setting off for work or at least from his home and he encounters a neighbour having difficulties with her car and after admitting that he knows little about under the bonnet he offers to take her to garage to arrange for the car to checked and later discovered that the engine has been deliberately tampered with and requires significant repairs..
The woman works at a store and he transports her in the mornings until the vehicle is fixed, She is an attractive woman who appears very interested in him. She has a husband who works as the representative of a computer firm and is away from home although the couple have only moved from the mainland to Vigata a couple of months before,. At one level the episode could be said to centre on three meals they have together. The first at his favourite Enzio’s Trattoria where she appears to have same approach to not talking while eating and to have same food interests although later she admits to have made enquiries about him beforehand. Seasoned watchers appreciate that she is just too interested in him too soon and that it takes time for him to begin to question the sincerity of this attention.
She wants to reciprocate hospitality with a meal at home but instead accepts the wish to attend a family meal at the home of the housekeeper who is preparing her special sauce recipe of Arancini, afood which we see her prepare in the very first episode when he meets her in Young Montalbano and she is preparing the food to sell at a local deli.
(Arancini or arancine are fried rice balls coated with breadcrumbs, said to have originated in Sicily in the 10th century. Arancini are usually filled with ragù (meat sauce), tomato sauce, mozzarella, and/or peas. There are a number of local variants that differ in fillings and shape. The name derives from the food's shape and color, which is reminiscent of an orange (the Italian word for orange is arancia, and arancina means "little orange").The main type of arancino sold in Sicilian cafes are arancini con ragù, which typically consist of meat in a tomato sauce, rice, and mozzarella. Many cafes also offer arancini con burro (béchamel sauce), or specialty arancini, such as arancini con funghi (mushrooms), con pistacchi (pistachios), or con melanzane (aubergine (eggplant)).The arancini are considered a typical dish of the city of Messina, where they usually have a conic form.).
I will come to the third meal at home after explaining the that the main story commences with the setting off of two small bombs outside small warehouses in residential areas. In the first instance there are two known criminals who appear possible suspects as they live in the adjacent residential dwelling but as with many stories there appears nothing to connect the two incidents together or with the obvious candidates.
The story that emerges and which connects with the neighbour and her broken down car emerges as follows. The woman is in fact not married and Salvo learns that man she says is her husband was fired three months previously and just before she comes to settle in the house close where the Inspector lives. He is in fact running drugs which are hidden in at least one of the computers which he finds after breaking into the home of his neighbour after he becomes suspicious about her, after the discovered set up on the night of his meal with her.
Even before this he had discovered that the woman worked at the same store as the son of a local Mafioso where his mother accuses the woman of being whore and she is supposed to be married. After the meal the housekeepers and the car jolting over a rock she expresses tiredness and does not invite him in, He is suspicious and goes back to the house and see her with the mad from the store and later when a colleague is asked to check out the store/ he checks out the store the couple are observed in a changing room. When a bullet hole is found in the side of car his suspicions are further aroused when it is confirmed that the bullet came from a high velocity riffle, and intended shot and not from the spray of gun fire which they had encountered on the journey into the town where she worked and the police station is located. The Carabineiri had set up a vehicle road block and which he had attempted to by pass just as a vehicle with armed men approaches spraying the polices and vehicles with gun fire. The news that an attempt had been made to kill the woman confirms that she is not being open and honest with the Inspector.
Just before he accepts the invitation to dine at her home he learns from his journalist Free TV newsman that he is being set up so when he arrives and she insists on dining out with a large standing lamp replacing the outside lights which she needs a bulb replacement. We see theme at the first course with Salvo insisting they move inside because of the threat of mosquitoes where she tried to seduce him but he leaves to join his colleagues who have arrested the journalists cameramen outside from a rival TV station and regular critic of the Inspector at every opportunity.
The more they investigate the case, especially the bombing appear to be related to a feud between rival mafia families seeking control of the drug trade. It is as this point that the links begin to emerge after the woman and her lover suddenly disappear and hen the lover is found in a burnt out car in the middle of no where and a local resident explained that several days before he had seen two vehicles parked at the spot of the now burnt out car. He had noted the numbers not the letters which h had used for the national lottery something which did on a regular basis and later he is able to confirm the number and letters of the second car belonging to one of the mafia bosses and is prepared to give evidence despite doing so. He uses his media friend to set a trap at the home of the neighbour after finding drugs in one of the computers and that the so called husband had not worked for the company since arriving in Sicily have been sacked. The neighbour was found murdered at the same time of the fire.
In this final scene the fake husband is apprehended coming for the drugs but saves the life of Salvo as the rivals also arrive for the consignment and then offers to give testimony because of the murder of his woman friend, and with Salvo promising to speak up for the man , out of respect for the dead woman who he learns was genuinely interested in him as a way out of the situation she had been forced into in addition to life saving
Once again Salvo had found a woman close to home only for the relationship to be dashed almost before it had commenced.
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