The Brewer of Preston

Praise for
Hunting Season
:

“Entertaining and every so often moving . . . The comedy is broader, bawdier, and darker in
Hunting Season
.”

—
The Wall Street Journal

“[A] darkly comic Italian revenge noir . . . the fiendishly clever plot builds with a cool undercurrent of suspense. . . . A deftly lean, addictive mystery.”

—
Shelf Awareness

“[A] bawdy little gem from the author of the Inspector Montalbano series.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“[Camilleri] turns his hand to historical fiction: the result is another success. . . . It would take a saint not to crack a smile at the antics that take place in these pages.”

—
Library Journal

Praise for Andrea Camilleri and the Montalbano Series:

“Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano mysteries might sell like hotcakes in Europe, but these world-weary crime stories were unknown here until the oversight was corrected (in Stephen Sartarelli's salty translation) by the welcome publication of
The Shape of Water
. . . . This savagely funny police procedural . . . prove[s] that sardonic laughter is a sound that translates ever so smoothly into English.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“Hailing from the land of Umberto Eco and La Cosa Nostra, Montalbano can discuss a pointy-headed book like
Western Attitudes Toward Death
as unflinchingly as he can pore over crime-scene snuff photos. He throws together an extemporaneous lunch of shrimp with lemon and oil as gracefully as he dodges advances from attractive women.”

—
Los Angeles Times

“[Camilleri's mysteries] offer quirky characters, crisp dialogue, bright storytelling—and Salvo Montalbano, one of the most engaging protagonists in detective fiction. . . . Montalbano is a delightful creation, an honest man on Siciliy's mean streets.”

—
USA Today

“Camilleri is as crafty and charming a writer as his protagonist is an investigator.”

—
The Washington Post Book World

“Like Mike Hammer or Sam Spade, Montalbano is the kind of guy who can't stay out of trouble. . . . Still, deftly and lovingly translated by Stephen Sartarelli, Camilleri makes it abundantly clear that under the gruff, sardonic exterior our inspector has a heart of gold, and that any outburst, fumbles, or threats are made only in the name of pursuing truth.”

—
The Nation

“Camilleri can do a character's whole backstory in half a paragraph.” —
The New Yorker

“Subtle, sardonic, and
molto simpatico
: Montalbano is the Latin re-creation of Philip Marlowe, working in a place that manages to be both more and less civilized than Chandler's Los Angeles.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Wit and delicacy and the fast-cut timing of farce play across the surface . . . but what keeps it from frothing into mere intellectual charm is the persistent, often sexually bemused Montalbano, moving with ease along zigzags created for him, teasing out threads of discrepancy that unravel the whole.”

—
Houston Chronicle

“Sublime and darkly humorous . . . Camilleri balances his hero's personal and professional challenges perfectly and leaves the reader eager for more.” —
Publishers Weekly
(starred review)

“The Montalbano mysteries offer
cose dolci
to the world-lit lover hankering for a whodunit.”

—
The Village Voice

“In Sicily, where people do things as they please, Inspector Salvo Montalbano is a bona fide folk hero.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

“The books are full of sharp, precise characterizations and with subplots that make Montalbano endearingly human. . . . Like the antipasti that Montalbano contentedly consumes, the stories are light and easily consumed, leaving one eager for the next course.”

—
New York Journal of Books

“The reading of these little gems is fast and fun every step of the way.”

—
The New York Sun

Also by Andrea Camilleri

Hunting Season

T
HE
I
NSPECTOR
M
ONTALBANO
S
ERIES

The Shape of Water

The Terra Cotta Dog

The Snack Thief

Voice of the Violin

Excursion to Tindari

The Smell of the Night

Rounding the Mark

The Patience of the Spider

The Paper Moon

August Heat

The Wings of the Sphinx

The Track of Sand

The Potter's Field

The Age of Doubt

The Dance of the Seagull

Treasure Hunt

Angelica's Smile

A
PENGUIN
BOOK

© Elvira Giorgianni

THE BREWER OF PRESTON

Andrea Camilleri, a bestseller in Italy and Germany, is the author of the popular Inspector Montalbano mystery series as well as historical novels that take place in nineteenth-century Sicily. His books have been made into Italian TV shows and translated into thirty-two languages. His thirteenth Montalbano novel,
The Potter's Field
, won the Crime Writers' Association International Dagger award and was longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Stephen Sartarelli is an award-winning translator and the author of three books of poetry.

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

penguin.com

A Penguin Random House Company

First published in Penguin Books 2014

Copyright © 1995 by Sellerio Editore

Translation copyright © 2014 by Stephen Sartarelli

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Originally published in Italian as
Il birraio di Preston
by Sellerio Editore, Palermo.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Camilleri, Andrea.

[Birraio di Preston. English]

The Brewer of Preston: a novel / Andrea Camilleri; translated by Stephen Sartarelli.

pages cm

eBook ISBN 978-0-698-18856-3

1. Sicily (Italy)—Fiction. 2. Italy—History—19th century—Fiction. I. Sartarelli, Stephen, 1954– translator. II. Title.

PQ4863.A3894B5713 2014

853'.914—dc23

2014041659

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.