This essay analyses the character of Montalbano as a critical object that includes a narrative figure constructed through a series of novels and a television series. It examines the strategies that the writer (of the novels) and the scriptwriters (of the TV series) employ in order to attract readers and spectators to Montalbano. These strategies employ stereotypes connected to the Mediterranean landscape, and this strategy emphasises the ethical characteristics of the protagonist while making the Mediterranean landscape an essential ‘character’ of the story. In this way the novelist Andrea Camilleri introduces an important variable in the traditional detective story: he does not modify its salient features, but he gives less importance to the typical logic of the plot, thus enabling the readers to enjoy and appreciate a narrative very different from the common codes of consumer narratives and serialities.