A character in search of an author or an unwritten murder story

Photographer: Neil Richard Huxtable  reprocessed by me

I began watching Montalbano when BBC4 screened the first series. I had already read one of the books by Camilleri, the writer who created Montalbano and I liked the character immensely. I loved the story  Il gioco degli specchi (The mirrors' game), somewhat inspired by Hitchcock's Rear Window and loved the use of Sicilian dialect mixed with Italian, as this is the way people speak in Sicily,  though I noticed that in the TV series people's speech has been  'Italianised' more than it would have been in Camilleri's books.
Hungry for more, I tuned in to RAI , the Italian national TV network, to watch on iPlayer episodes of other Montalbano series (he has been around since the end of the 1990s) not yet sold internationally. I think I have seen most of them, including the prequel Il Giovane Montalbano, which you can see on youtube without subtitles (I dont need them anyway) and in which we observe a young Montalbano farsi le ossa, cut his teeth.

Montalbano is endearing, with his volcanic temper and love of food (his meals are absolutely mouthwatering), the scenery of the films is spectacular - I know quite a few people who, inspired by the TV series, have booked holidays in Sicily. The storylines are believable.  There is the  Mafia thread in the background - yes, Sicily has seen and sees quite a number of Mafia related crimes. In the books and in the series the issue of the authorities' collusion with Mafia criminality is addressed  as well as the work of those people, represented by Montalbano, who are profoundly anti-Mafia and ready to risk their lives to combat it. But Camilleri has made it clear that the Mafia is not centre stage in his stories, it would be too predictable. Thus stories of unpaid pizzo and related murders intermingle with more passionate dramas revolving around the reality of human relationships.

Not long ago, after watching an inspector Montalbano story, I toyed with the idea of devising a storyline for a Montalbano case which had as  main character  an elegant and rather debt ridden Sicilian woman, a divorcee, pretending to her lover of a few months, a well to do man, that she was pregnant by him in order to extort  money from him.  I had the lover murdered in my story.  I also had  him not convinced she was pregnant by him.  Did she kill him?  I never fully developed that story, I have not got the hang of detective novels. Would I start with the murder? Would I imagine an altercation between the two? Was my character really pregnant or was she pretending to be pregnant altogether? When confronted by her lover would she deny the pregnancy or would she admit she might have been cheating so that the pregnancy would not be doubted, only his paternity? Why did she need money from him and how much? Was there a mafia connection? Was she being blackmailed because of a shady past which she was trying at all costs to cover up? and who murdered him? Did she do it?
As I said I never wrote the story. But I researched it for fun. The idea came when I read about the  rumours around Beyonce's  pregnancy - it is said she did not give birth to her child, a surrogate mother did, and it has been speculated that at some point during the 'pregnancy' Beyonce faked her bump . Somehow it  made me reflect about women who fake pregnancies and why they do so. Thus my possible detective story. But helas, I am no Camilleri so I cannot get Montalbano to solve the murder. Now, can you see why I did not pursue it?

In the course of  my background research  I discovered  that  femme fatales in Hollywood  movies often use the ruse of fake pregnancy in order to gain financially. This was definitely the case for Mildred Pierce (1945). The infamous Alex  in Fatal Attraction does not fake a pregnancy for money but she does so that she can continue to see the man she has obsessively fallen in love with.
So what shall I do with my very own femme fatale? I dont know really, I have not written that story. I am ambivalent about her. To my mind she fakes the pregnancy for money but she has second thoughts and does not take her lover's money and tells him he may not be the father. Later, under pressure by her blackmailers, she fakes her own suicide and comes back to kill her lover, who by now is with another woman. Or something like that. I cant have her motivated by money alone. I would like to think of her as someone a bit confused, passionate about life but able to take her responsibilities, despite everything.
Not a stereotypical femme fatale after all.
(In the title of this post I could not help referencing Pirandello and his Six characters in search of an author, something Camilleri does too when he makes Montalbano rebel against a gruesome storyline by addressing Camilleri directly, in Pirandello style)

( Model Alex B)