The Terracotta Dog

The Terracotta Dog is a crime novel by the Italian writer Andrea Camilleri, published in Italian in 1996 under the title Il cane di terracotta and translated into English by Stephen Sartarelli in 2002. It is the second novel in Camilleri's long-running series following Salvo Montalbano, chief of police in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata, and follows Montalbano as a mafia investigation leads him to a concealed cave containing wartime relics and the remains of two young lovers who had lain hidden there since the Second World War. The novel was adapted for Italian television by RAI, with Luca Zingaretti as Montalbano, first airing in 2000, and it helped extend the international reach of Camilleri's Sicilian detective series beyond its 1994 debut.