This book is better than any of the earlier Leon books I read. She's more comfortable with her characters and more comfortable letting the endings be something slightly less than neat, if still obvious. The details of Venice were present but not overwhelming, and only once did I feel like skipping a couple of pages to avoid the detail-heavy description of Brunetti's boring paperwork escapades.

This centers on the suspicious apparent suicide of a cadet at the military academy. The cadet turns out to be the son of an actual, honest politician, and that raises Brunetti's suspicions. He's right to be suspicious, of course, but the book never puts any particular urgency into his investigation. The pace is as slow as a gondola, but believable, at that.