Riccardino

Andrea Camilleri had the last story in his Commissioner Montalbano series ready for a long time: the Sellerio publishing company kept it in a drawer, with instructions to publish it only when the great master would no longer be with us. Camilleri gave the manuscript of his novel Riccardino to Elvira Sellerio back in 2005, but it was still too early for the famous commissioner to leave the scene. Indeed, in the past fifteen years more than twenty novels and stories have been published, giving us countless hours in the company of one of the best-loved characters in Italian literature. Montalbano changed over the years, growing older, too, as Camilleri decided to let time pass in his novels just as it does in real life. This is why in 2016 Camilleri took up his manuscript again, to revise some passages, showing the evolution of the character, though without touching either the title or the plot. But who is Riccardino? Salvo Montalbano himself asks the same question when he receives a phone call in which a man introduces himself with this name and tells him he wants to meet him, but the commissioner knows no one by that name. Shortly after, Catarella announces to the commissioner that a man has been killed, and this is how a final investigation gets under way, a meta-novel in which he will also have to confront with his television alter ego and with none other than... his creator. Riccardino Andrea Camilleri Sellerio, 2020