Why a Booktrail?
1990s – A crime has been committed in the chilly Venetian dawn and you never guess who the suspect is?
1990s – A crime has been committed in the chilly Venetian dawn and you never guess who the suspect is?
When Brunetti turns up to his latest crime scene – an act of vandalism – the last person he is expecting to see there is his wife. Least of all as a suspect.
The windows of a travel agency have been smashed and Brunetti’s wife Paola has been arrested. She tells them that she knows the agency arranges sex-tours to third-world countries and are involved in the child-for-sex trade.
What does this mean for Brunetti and will he be torn between his job or his wife?
An unassuming travel agency in the city of Venice is the setting for the latest Brunetti installment and it proves to be one like no other. With a possible link to the child sex trade, the legal and moral high grounds are turned on their heads. Brunetti is at first put into quite a difficult position but then things get worse –
The owner of the travel agency is found dead.
So the moral and the legal ground are firmly entrenched here and of course the judicial one when the owner is found murdered. Just what is the opinion of the italian people ? Brunetti has to fight for his own beliefs whilst doing a job yet having the difficulty of his wife right in the middle of it all. Quite a headache.
Having such a difficult subject and amoral argument allows Donna Leon to show us yet another facet of Italian society – and as Brunetti and the others investigate, one facet of life is never far behind – that Italian quirk of ducking into bars and cafes for a coffee to keep them going, long lunches and the Italian level of suspicion both against the police force and within its ranks.
Don’t think Brunetti just has this to deal with – despite it being tricky, a bank robbery and Mafia intimidation are undercurrents which flow around the city and threaten to flood its canals.