El carrusel de las confusiones (Comisario Montalbano, 28)

In Vigàta, the nighttime scenes acquire a Leopardian beauty, but they don't absorb the murmur of invisible wings in the darkness. On a deserted street, a woman in her thirties is abducted, drugged with chloroform, and abandoned without suffering any violence or theft, just as happened the day before to the niece of Enzo, the owner of Salvo Montalbano's favorite trattoria. Both women share the same age and work in bank branches. A few days later, another young woman is kidnapped using the same method, but in this case, she is released with about thirty superficial cuts all over her body except for her face. And coinciding with these strange events, a fire, clearly arson, partially destroys a shop whose owner and his girlfriend have disappeared without a trace. The situation reeks of the mafia, but the passage of time hasn't diminished Montalbano's keen sense for deciphering the smallest details and grasping hidden motivations. When everything points to an obvious explanation, the exercise of impeccable logic leads the commissioner to a far more complex reality, a web of perversions, betrayals, and revenge. In this swampy labyrinth of servitude and heartbreak, of grim unease, hidden amidst a maze of confusion is a "death chamber": the last, the most secret, the place where the truth lies in wait.