Both he and his creator will be greatly missed.Īpril in Spain by John Banville (Faber, £14.99)

To give more detail would be to risk spoilers: suffice to say that Camilleri has contrived a fitting goodbye to a dear old friend who operates, to the very last, on his own terms. As so often in Camilleri’s thrillers, the malevolent forces of the mafia and the Catholic church are pulling strings in the background – the wily prelate who tries to entrap Montalbano with questions of moral philosophy is particularly enjoyable – and the author joins in as well, with increasingly improbable suggestions about how the inspector should proceed.

Equally tired and tetchy, the fictional Camilleri repeatedly chides Montalbano for his lack of progress investigating the death of the titular Riccardino, a man with a colourful private life who has been gunned down in the street by an unknown killer on a motorbike. It’s set, as usual, in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata, where the humane and witty detective, grown ever more weary and cynical, is joined, for the first time, by the author himself.

This 28th and, sadly, final Inspector Montalbano novel was written in 2005 and kept in a safe until the author’s death in 2019. Riccardino by Andrea Camilleri, translated by Stephen Sartarelli (Mantle, £16.99)

The family upstairs review