The Track Of Sand (Inspector Montalbano mysteries) - Tapa blanda

The Track of Sand is Andrea Camilleri's twelfth outing in the wryly humorous Inspector Montalbano series. Inspector Montalbano rises one morning to find the carcass of a horse on the beach in front of his seaside home. But no sooner do his men arrive, than the body has mysteriously vanished, leaving only a track in the sand. Before long Rachele, a beguiling equestrian champion, turns up at police headquarters to report her horse missing. The horse had been stabled at the grounds of a certain Saverio Lo Duca, one of the richest men in Sicily. Lo Duca has lost one of his own horses too. Montalbano, his curiosity piqued, investigates, but before long things take a more disturbing turn . . . But who has Montalbano upset within this strange, unfamiliar world of horse-racing? And what has the Mafia to do with it all? The Track of Sand is followed by the thirteenth novel in the series, The Potter's Field.

Andrea Camilleri was one of Italy's most famous contemporary writers. The Inspector Montalbano series, which has sold over 65 million copies worldwide, has been translated into thirty-two languages and was adapted for Italian television, screened on BBC4. The Potter's Field, the thirteenth book in the series, was awarded the Crime Writers' Association's International Dagger for the best crime novel translated into English. In addition to his phenomenally successful Inspector Montalbano series, he was also the author of the historical comic mysteries Hunting Season and The Brewer of Preston. He died in Rome in July 2019.