A Venetian Reckoning: An Evocative Peep into the Dark Underworld of the Beauteous City (Ulverscroft Large Print Series)

Rating:
Summary: Fast-paced and compelling with a wry touch of humour
Review: If you have never been to Venice, this book will take you there. If you have, it will take you back. The setting adds attractive interst to a clever fast-moving thriller that includes just the right amount of detail to grab your interest whilst not being too tedious. Written in the third person, Commissario Guido Brunetti is our engaging non-heroic Italian sleuth, making a refreshing change from many of his contemporaries. His detective skills are reminiscent of a modern-day Hercule Poirot. Lovers of Agatha Christie will enjoy the comfortingly observant style of Donna Leon. She describes people and places, and sometimes food and wine, so that they live well throughout the book. The crime that Brunetti investigates is interesting with some nice twists that hold your interest right the way to the last page. I like this book because of its beautiful balance between good and bad, it attention to detail and sense of realism. Having only just discovered this author it seems a shame that many of her books are out of print.

Rating:
Summary: Murder on the Mainland
Review: It is the beginning of winter and a truck, coming from Serbia, crashes on the icy road in the Dolomites. Its passengers were ten women from the Balkans. All of them died. At about the same time, Avvocato Carlo Trevisan is murdered on a train heading for Venice. He is one of the top lawyers in Venice, with a list of clients that includes most of the high and mighty in the city. And in short order two more men, both of them connected to Trevisan, are murdered.

What connects these three people? Commissario Guido Brunetti goes to work, helped by the usual cast - Sergeante Vianello, Signorina Elettra Zorzi, and the whole questura - and supported by his wife Professoressa Paola Falier.

Brunetti works meticulously by checking out phone calls and then connecting them to locations. He finds the cross references and the connection to the crashed truck: women imported for sales into prostitution. Slowly but surely Brunetti uncovers the whole network and thus finds the person who committed the murders.