Inspector Salvo Montalbano is a fictional character created by Italian writer Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri

Andrea Camilleri is an Italian writer.-Biography:Originally from Porto Empedocle, Sicily, Camilleri, began studies at the Faculty of Literature in 1944, without concluding them, meanwhile publishing poems and short stories.From 1948 to 1950 Camilleri studied stage and film direction at the Silvio...

 in a series of novels and short stories.

Set in the picturesque Sicilian town of Vigàta (modeled after Porto Empedocle

Porto Empedocle

Porto Empedocle is a town and comune in Italy on the coast of the Strait of Sicily, administratively part of the province of Agrigento. It is the namesake of Empedocles , a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of the city of Agrigentum , in his day a Greek colony in Sicily...

, Camilleri's home town), the fractious detective's character and manner encapsulate much of Sicilian mythology and astute detective work. The original books are written in a mix of Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

, strict Sicilian

Sicilian language

Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...

, and a Sicilianized Italian.

The name Montalbano is a homage to the Spanish writer Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán

Manuel Vázquez Montalbán was a prolific Spanish writer: journalist, novelist, poet, essayist, anthologue, prologist, humourist, critic, as well as a gastronome and a FC Barcelona supporter....

; the similarities between Montalbán's Pepe Carvalho

Pepe Carvalho

Pepe Carvalho is a fictional private detective, the protagonist of a series of novels written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán.-The character:Carvalho has a rich, complex and contradictory personality. The author uses his adventures to describe, and in many instances criticize, the political and...

 and Camilleri's fictional detective are remarkable.