---
product_id: 34269762
title: "The Dance of the Seagull (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery) Paperback – February 26, 2013"
brand: "andrea camilleristephen sartarelli"
price: "$37.01"
currency: USD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 8
url: https://www.desertcart.us/products/34269762-the-dance-of-the-seagull-an-inspector-montalbano-mystery-paperback
store_origin: US
region: United States of America
---

# The Dance of the Seagull (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery) Paperback – February 26, 2013

**Brand:** andrea camilleristephen sartarelli
**Price:** $37.01
**Availability:** ✅ In Stock

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- **What is this?** The Dance of the Seagull (An Inspector Montalbano Mystery) Paperback – February 26, 2013 by andrea camilleristephen sartarelli
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## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    This is a pretty good read
  

*by L***A on Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2016*

The Dance of the Seagull is one of my favorites of the Montalbano movies.  Mainly because of the Fazio abduction part of the plot and the wonderful scene where Salvo saves Fazio (oh dear. Is this a spoiler?).  In the movie you know that they can't get rid of Fazio, so you just know he'll survive, but it is still tense and such a great release when they do rescue him.  It is a fabulous scene and incidentally, shot in an incredibly beautiful location.  The movie is one of the best of the series.  At any rate, I tell you this because I come pre-disposed to liking this book.  Granted, I have written a few harsh reviews lately because of how the Montalbano character is becoming less interesting and attractive to me.  In the case of this book, although he's still pretty much a jerk, he is thankfully not whining too much about getting old.  There's still some of that going on, and my tolerance for it hasn't changed, but it seems fairly under control.  The goofy "Montalbano One" and "Two" have only minor appearances thank goodness.  The plot is a good one (there's much more going on than the abduction) and it is complicated enough that my attention doesn't wander.  There's one sort of odd bit near the end where Camilleri writes himself in (we've already learned that Montalbano the character in the book has become famous, and there's a fictionalized TV show about him (he's played by a bald actor - hahah)... so we get a fiction within a fiction), and so it all gets a little bizarre.I keep wondering (have I written this before?) if Salvo is Camilleri's Mary Sue.  Those of you who follow fan fiction will know what I mean.  I suspect as the books have progressed that this is the case.  Maybe it always has been.  I saw an interview with Camilleri and found him rather annoying -- just like Montalbano.What else? Well, Mimi gets to be a little clever despite constant belittling and haranguing by Salvo (poor Mimi does not fare as well in the books as he does in the movies).  Livia doesn't really make any appearance whatsoever (which is okay by me as I think Camilleri has no idea what to do with her -- or possibly any female characters).  Fazio spends most of his time in the hospital. So this book is pretty much all Salvo, all the time -- but a Salvo that isn't too pathetic and is in fact quite brilliant.  And like I said, it could be worse.  I give it four stars because I didn't hate it and enjoyed reading it.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Montalbano feels the hair stand up on his arms
  

*by P***O on Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2013*

Montalbano is at his most emotional in this novel. He watches a seagull die on his beach front, and he can't get the image of this death dance out of his mind. One of his most trusted detectives goes missing, and Montalbano reaches a state of collapse searching for him in a creepy Sicilian landscape. He visits the scene of a sadistic murder and feels the hair stand up on his arms. One scene after another finds him "metaphysically disconcerted," upset by the sad state of humanity, Italy and the world. He even has a possibly paranormal experience. Maybe he's going through andropause!And yet he's never been sharper. His policeman's instincts are at a high pitch of perfection in this book.There is nothing more pleasurable than living inside Inspector Montalbano's world for a few hundred pages. He does all the things we've come to expect of the irascible chief. He has crazy convoluted arguments with his girlfriend Livia. He tells outrageous lies, sometimes for a good cause, sometimes just for fun. He indulges in gourmet gluttony, whether at home or eating out. He experiences lustful thoughts at awkward moments, and the object of his desire is decades too young for him.In other words, Montalbano is non-stop funny, even when he gets metaphysical.  His lovable assistant Catarella is delightfully disruptive to police work, as always. And the enmity between Montalbano's housekeeper and his girlfriend is dependably amusing.Camilleri is a literary phenomenon. He can't help being deep, even at his funniest. And the translator must be a bit of a genius too, to convey the exquisite charm of Camilleri's prose, and to capture the cadence of Catarella's hilarious patter.The Dance of the Seagull is a wonderful book. Camilleri just keeps getting better.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 







  
  
    Cat at His Best, Montalbano Not
  

*by D***D on Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2013*

"The Dance of the Seagull" by Andrea Camilleri is quite good.  Often funny, often not, and the translation by Stephen Sartarelli is truly excellent.  Cat, the receptionist at the police station, is at his finest, and Sartarelli's translation of Cat's mangled, heavily accented Sicilian Italian, reads perfectly, just like a New Jersey transplant from the "old country." Cat has never been better. He alone is worth reading the book.The story is pretty good, but there are too many characters whose names are difficult to remember and keep straight.  The "romance" between Montalbano and nurse Angela is not only ridiculous but most likely unnecessary for the story's coehesion.This is the 15th installment of the Inspector Montalbano series by Camilleri, the tales which have made Camilleri rich and famous (and I've read most of them).  Born in 1925, Camilleri at 88 years, is getting on in years, and I suspect he has a ghost-writer who is assisting him. Why? Well, there are parts of this "Seagull" story that just don't sound like the Camilleri of old (say, the mid-to-late 1990s), when the first 6 - 10 of the series were written."Seagull" is a bit too convoluted with a tad too many twists and turns. But on the other hand it is still classic Camilleri.  Montalbano's strange behavior of "getting-lost-in-all-hospitals" is hilarious.  Some scenes, on the other hand, are macabre, verging on disgusting. There is a lot of eating and discussion of menus, as usual, and the 57 year-old Inspector Montalbano is himself aging (and sometimes losing it mentally) along with Camilleri. Is Montalbano Camilleri's gastronomic alter-ego?Poor Livia (Montalbano's much neglected woman-friend who lives in the north of Italy) is fully absent from this tale (except at the very beginning), much to the disappointment of a reader.  The other, usual police force characters and Montalbano's housekeeper/cook are their usual bizarre selves, entertainingly so for the most part. Officer Mimi has a rare episode of standing up to Inspector Montalbano and getting his way. The whole story exists as a result of Officer Fazio's sudden disappearance. The ending is kind of a let-down, and Fazio is left dangling a bit.Thus, to me, "The Dance of the Seagull" is a 4.

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*Last updated: 2026-02-26*