The Young Montalbano

Salvo Montalbano wasn't always the chief inspector of Vigàta, nor did he always live in the beautiful house on Marinella beach. His career began in Mascalippa, a small village in the mountains of Sicily. From there, it was a long, rocky road before he became the experienced “Commissario Montalbano.” For the solitary investigator in the successful crime series, his youth was the most formative period of his life. But what was Montalbano's life like before he became a commissario? Were there other loves in his life before Livia? And why did he find his home in Vigàta of all places? This prequel to the two exciting seasons of “Commissario Montalbano” tells us all about it. .. "Just as Shaun Evans makes for a physically unlikely but entirely credible young 'Inspector Morse', so [Michele] Riondino gives the part of Montalbano an entirely convincing and individual interpretation. As we followed the young detective from an early posting high in the unforgiving Sicilian mountains down to a seaside town where you could practically smell the squid in the air – and the corruption – it was like taking a walk through an entirely new world. [...] Littered with witty sideways looks at both the joy and madness of Italian life – in one scene, Montalbano interviewed a lawyer who was peering, Dickens style, between towering scrolls of case notes – the feeling was the one you get when curled up with a book on holiday while the sun sets and you’re on your second cocktail." (Keith Watson, in: metro.co.uk) Autumn 1990, Salvo Montalbano is the deputy commissioner of a town in the Sicilian mountains. He is dating a teacher from Catania who wants to marry him. But then he receives his long-awaited promotion to commissioner and must move to Vigàta, in the south of Sicily.