Bloody Italy by Patricia Prandini Buckler

Author:Patricia Prandini Buckler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2014-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

The Snack Thief

The Snack Thief is a story about two murders which seem at first to have nothing to do with one another. Much more than that, it is a novel about a young boy, an orphan, whom Montalbano and Livia want to adopt. It almost gets those two to the altar. At sea, perhaps in international waters, a young Tunisian is shot by a Tunisian patrol boat, supposedly when the boat he was on refused to stop. In Vigata, Signor Lapecora, a retired businessman, is found stabbed in the elevator of the apartment house where he and his wife had lived. Montalbano interviews the other apartment dwellers, all of them in their own little world, none of them particularly interested in the victim. The Tunisian episode seems to be going nowhere, when it turns out that Lapecora had a Tunisian mistress, a beauty named Karima, who was for the most part a prostitute specializing in older men. Karima and her young son, Francois, have suddenly fled, leaving behind a large bank account. Their landlady, who tried to care for both of them, speaks only Arabic and can’t help much. But then some parents complain to the police that a tough child is stealing their children’s lunches. On a hunch, Montalbano sets a trap for the hungry young thief, who is Karima’s son.

Karima came to Italy five years before with her baby boy. She started as a cleaning lady and then went on to do more than that for Lapecora. That barely scratches the surface. Montalbano discovers that there had been an understanding between the Italian Secret Service and its counterpart in Tunisia, which wanted Italy to help kill a dangerous terrorist, one Ahmed Moussa, Karima’s brother. Both of these secret services are as dangerous as any Mafia, but their codes are much more vague and capricious. They knew that Karima was in Sicily, where Lapecora was one of her many sexual contacts, so they sent one Fahrid to set things up in Sicily and get himself involved with Karima, who would lead him to Lapecora, whose business they would use for cover. Ahmed trusted Fahrid, who persuaded him to come to Italy to get a shipment of weapons. Tunisian operatives on another boat machine-gunned him. When Karima found out that her brother had been murdered, she tried to escape, and Fahrid killed her.

Once Montalbano found out about Lapecora’s mistress, that he had taken a huge sum of money out of the bank for her, and that his wife was not out of town when he was murdered, he bluffs her into confessing. Otherwise, it would have been a difficult case to prosecute, given the international intrigue going on at the same time. The dramatic center of the novel is the orphan Francois (he has just lost his mother), whom Livia and Montalbano love so much that they drop their defensive poses toward one another. The Snack Thief ends with Montalbano (he has just lost his father) writing a long, heart-felt letter to Livia admitting his need for her and Francois.

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