I heard about Ms. Leon’s Guido Brunetti series a few years ago, but somehow never managed to pick one up. My interest was renewed in this first book of the series when I learned that they were making a movie out of it with Colin Firth in the lead role. Now that we have to get to the airport 2 hours early for domestic flights, I had time to kill when departing for my recent summer vacation. I saw this book in an airport book shop and thought I could do worse than immerse myself in a thriller set in “La Serenissima”.

Frankly, I could have done better, MUCH better. It’s pretty clear to me that the publisher knew that the “thriller in Venice” concept was middlebrow-posing-as-highbrow enough to entice readers, and it didn’t really bother them that there really were no thrills to speak of. Have no doubt that the Venice of our imagination is heady stuff, strong enough to erode the faculties that would demand a tight plot from a book about police investigation.

The Venice in our mind is so suggestive, that our imaginations are sent soaring with the most meager of setting details, a lazy lapse in authorial duty that most amazon.com reviews of this book fail to acknowledge.