A couple of weeks ago, while browsing the shelves of a used-book store here in Paris, I came across a detective novel by Andrea Camilleri, called The Snack Thief. One of my daughters, a State Department expert on international crime who is fluent in Italian and very good at Italian cooking, was with me, and recommended it. (She, of course, had read it in Italian.) I loved it, and totally fell for its protagonist, Inspector Montalbano, a police detective in a coastal town in Italy. He's smart, volatile, and funny, but above all, he loves and honors masterful Italian cooking. An encounter with fried mullet can put him in a coma of pleasure for an entire day. My kind of guy. I found myself laughing out loud.

Now, I've become a Camilleri junkie. I'm midway through one of his better known Montalbano novels, The Terracotta Dog. I won't talk about the plot, because I don't want to give anything away, but suffice it to say, everything that I loved about The Snack Thief is here, multiplied by two.

I haven't enjoyed a fictional character this much in a long time, and I think it's because I feel an especially powerful resonance with his obsession with excellent food. I'm not an expert chef, though I do love to cook, and when I travel, I travel for food. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Here in Paris, where we're living for six months so that I can more efficiently research my next book, I spend most of the day looking forward to lunch and dinner and scouring various sources, from Zagat to Le Fooding, to determine where to get the best meal for an appropriate price. Everything else--museums, tours, parks--is foreplay, and a means of keeping my weight down. So far so good: I can still wear jeans with a 32 waist. I can remember meals and restaurants from decades ago, including, by the way, my first-ever encounter with fresh salmon (1981) at a San Francisco place called the Hayes Street Grill.

So I proclaim it here: Io sono Montalbano! (I AM Montalbano.)

E.