It's never too late

The always valuable Euro Crime news site links to the Independent's recent interview with Andrea Camilleri, author of seven novels to date about the Sicilian police inspector Salvo Montalbano.

The interview opens with a discussion of a memorable Montalbano outburst in The Scent of the Night, the sixth of the seven books. Later, Camilleri reveals that Montalbano is based to a great extent on his own father. He discusses his attitudes toward the Sicialian language, and he shares some perhaps surprising ideas about the role of the Mafia in his novels.

But what really caught my eye is something that ought to encourage any crime-fiction readers who are also would-be crime-fiction writers: Montalbano was 70 years old when he published his first Montalbano book.

(Camilleri/Montalbano central in the blogosphere these days is Crime Scraps. Norm/Uriah, the curator of Crime Scraps, is a Montalbano nut.)

© Peter Rozovsky 2007

Technorati tags:

Andrea Camilleri
Salvo Montalbano
Crime fiction, Italy
Crime fiction, Sicily