"Camilleri is as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator."--Washington Post

"Sly humor, an eye for beauty, a disdain for clichs and fools plus a first-rate intelligence make [Montalbano] formidable both as a detective and as a companion."--Publishers Weekly

The Smell of the Night, the sixth mystery in the international best-selling series featuring Inspector Montalbano, brings the shady shenanigans of late twentieth-century international finance to small-town Sicily.

A "financial wizard" entrusted with the savings of nearly half the retirees of Vigata mysteriously disappears with the money and a young man who worked for him. In a rather atypical case for Montalbano, the inspector finds himself initially shut out of the investigation by the ever hostile commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi, and forced to work from the shadows.