The fifth in the hit Italian crime series, Excursion to Tindari is another darkl y comic detective story featuring Inspector Montalbano.Maybe a phrase, a line, a hint somewhere would reveal a reason, any reason, for the elderly couple's di sappearance. They'd saved everything . . . there was even a copy of the 'certifi cate of living existence', that nadir of bureaucratic imbecility . . . What was the 'protocol', to use a word dear to government offices? Did one simply write o n a sheet of paper something like: 'I, the undersigned, Salvo Montalbano, hereby declare myself to be in existence', sign it, and turn it in to the appointed cl erk? A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building ear ly one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari - two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montal bano to solve amid the daily complications of life at Vigàta police headquarters .But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man live d in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily's brutal 'New Maf ia', which leads him down a path more evil and more far-reaching than any he has been down before.Excursion to Tindari is followed by the sixth novel in the I nspector Montalbano series, The Scent of the Night.Praise for Andrea Camilleri :'A joy to read' The Times'This savagely funny police procedural proves that sardonic laughter is a sound that translates ever so smoothly into English' New York Times