The tenth book in Leon's Commissario Brunetti series, as with other
series entries I've been reading lately, offers more of the same:
descriptions of the seamy underside of Venice interspersed with
lightweight police work.
The constant background of incompetence and corruption does rather
grind down the regular reader, and the lack of good honest clues and
detective-story puzzle means that the book doesn't really get going
until about two-thirds of the way through -- and just as the detection
is getting interesting, it's cut short by an action sequence aboard
boats in a storm, for much of which Brunetti isn't even present.
This time the setting is mostly Pellestrina, an island south of Venice
where the main economy is fishing. As always with Leon, there's lots
and lots of detail; Leon has been living in Venice for over thirty
years and apparently knows her stuff, though I'm ignorant enough that
I might well not spot errors anyway. A fisherman and his son are
murdered, and Brunetti faces a wall of silence while trying to
investigate.
Without a puzzle for the reader to solve -- the information that helps
make things even slightly clear isn't given until quite late on -- all
that's really left is the description. It's all very well as far as
description goes, but it's more a narrated tourist guide than a story.
The slow start is an ongoing problem for this series, but I'll
probably read more of them all the same.
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