Book Report: Death in a Strange Country

7. Donna Leon, Death in a Strange Country (1993) (3/27/19)

If all Commissario Guido Brunetti did was wander around his native Venice for the entire duration of one of Leon's books, I'd be perfectly content. You learn so much about the history of both Venice and Italy, about social relations and government corruption, about food and drink. You meet Brunetti's family, the lovely Paola and teenagers Raffi and Chiara, and fellow police officers—including the somewhat ridiculous Vice-Questore Patta. The mystery to be solved is almost incidental.

Which is probably just as well, because the mystery in this book, involving, immediately, the death of an American serviceman from the nearby army post of Vicenza, and later the seemingly unrelated theft of several Impressionist paintings, ends up being not especially satisfying in its wrap-up.

Oh well! I still got a thoroughly enjoyable tour of Venice and met a few interesting characters. All good!

This is the second of twenty-eight Brunetti novels, written by an ex-pat American, now 76, who lived in Venice for twenty-five years. Apparently his character becomes more sharply delineated (and droller) as the series goes on, so I'm looking forward to continuing to get to know him.

The following paragraph encapsulates the reasonableness of Brunetti, who comes across as a sort of Everyman—likable, with few major faults; dedicated to his work and his family; compassionate yet a tad cynical. You'd enjoy bumping into him at a random bar in Venice and sharing a glass of wine and a bit of conversation with him.

The secret of police success lay, Brunetti knew, not in brilliant deductions or the psychological manipulation of suspects but in the simple fact that human beings tended to assume that their own level of intelligence was the norm, the standard, and to work on that assumption. Hence the stupid were quickly caught, for their idea of what was cunning was so lamentably impoverished as to make them obvious prey. This same rule, unfortunately, made his job all the more difficult when he had to deal with criminals possessed of intelligence or courage.