Review: Death in a Strange Country (Commissario Brunetti, #2) by Donna Leon

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon


3,5 stars

"Death in a Strange Country, is the second book in Donna Leon’s Guido Brunetti Series.
When the body of Sgt. Michael Foster, a public health inspector at the American base in Vicenza, is pulled up from a canal in Venice, it looks like a mugging gone wrong. But Brunetti is convinced that there’s something more than just an American being a victim of a robbery.

When he travels to the American base in Vicenza to obtain more information about Forster, he’s suddenly told by his inept and blustering boss, Vice-Quetore Patta that the case has been closed as a mugging gone wrong.

As more bodies turn up dead, Brunetti is determined to get to the bottom of what looks like a huge conspiracy linking the Mafia and the US and Italian governments in a cover-up of illegal toxic waste dumping. He’s unable to come to terms with the fact that the government could be involved in something so dangerous….

When Brunetti is pulled off the case, the more resolute he becomes in solving the mystery. Even if it means doing it behind his boss’s back.

‘“He looked down at the glass again. ‘I care that these things happen, that we poison ourselves and our progeny, that we knowingly destroy our future, but I do not believe that there is anything - and I repeat, anything - that can be done to prevent it. We are a nation of egoists. It is our glory, but it will be our destruction, for none of us can be made to concern ourselves about something as abstract as “the common good”. The best of us can rise to feeling concern for our families, but as a nation we are incapable of more.’

‘I refuse to believe that.’ Brunetti said.
‘Your refusal to believe it,’ the Count said with a smile that was almost tender, ‘makes it no less true, Guido.”– Poala’s father’s answer to Brunetti’s question about the corruption and ineptitude of their government.

We continue to see more of Brunetti’s family life and I enjoy the warmth and connection that he has with his wife…

Then I discovered girls, and I forgot all about being angry or lost, or whatever I was. I just wanted them to like me. That’s the only thing that was important to me.’
‘Were there a lot of them?’ she asked.
He shrugged.
‘And did they like you?’ He grinned.
‘Oh, go away, Guido, and find yourself something to do. Watch television.’
‘I hate television.’
‘Then help me do the dishes.’
‘I love television.’

We get to see how much he loves his city. The beauty that surrounds him….

The resolution in the end is one that Brunetti was happy about but understandable – where corruption is involved in governments without morals, it’s something one comes to expect.

View all my reviews