When he died in July at the age of 93, Andrea Camilleri, had published about 90 detective stories, 30 of them the hugely popular Montalbano stories set in Sicily. Camilleri started the Montalbano series in his mid 60s. He was, as The Guardian obituary put it, “not so much an author as a one-man literary production line”. Some years, when he was in his 80s, he published as many as eight novels.

Maestro Camilleri was a fascinating and admirable character. He had a previous successful life as an innovative theatre director and teacher, but it was at the age when most would retire that he first achieved a bestseller with the first Montalbano story set in Sicily. After that there was no stopping him.

Commissario Montlbano is known to UK viewers through a popular TV series. The dazzlingly wonderful landscapes of Sicily feature, alongside the slightly grumpy police officer and his cast of colleagues, including a pathologist who loves cakes and a girlfriend who only ever drops in. Reassuringly, no crime is ever too dreadful to prevent Montalbano going for a decent lunch.

So, if Camilleri is anything to go by, it seems quite conservative to plan another 20 or 30 novels in your sixties – or another 90, if you really put your back into the work.