The sixth mystery in the Inspector Montalbano series, The Smell of the Night brings the shady shenanigans of late twentieth-century international finance to small-town Sicily. A "financial wizard" entrusted with the savings of nearly half the retirees of Vigata mysteriously disappears with the money. In a rather atypical case for Montalbano, the inspector finds himself initially shut out of the investigation by the ever-hostile commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi and forced to work from the shadows.