It Starts At An Abbatoir, And The Violence, Like The Smell, Hangs Around

For the first time in 3 books, Commissario Brunetti was able to arrest the person guilty of the primary crime. So Dressed for Death is truly a momentous occasion. If we want to be accurate, he managed to arrest two of the three responsible, but not before they killed three other people, including that third guilty party. And one of the two has sufficient influence and prestige that he'll likely wiggle his way out of anything more than being an accomplice, but it's still an improvement.

I did find it funny when one of the crooks killed the other, as it made me think that might happen to the third crook, and the one doing the killing was the person least protected by money and status. Three books in, I was starting to think Brunetti was in some Jim Corrgian/Spectre situation. Brunetti's always able to piece together who is responsible for whatever death he's investigating. Frequently, he's unable to get them prosecuted. However, there's always a catch, and the guilty will wind up suffering (or dying) through someone else's actions. As though Brunetti were Corrigan, and the city of Venice was the Spectre, possessing random citizens to carry out vengeance.

Didn't turn out that way, though. It would clash with the tone of the book*anyway. So once again, the plot was not the major interest for me, but Leon continues to flesh out the characters that inhabit Brunetti's world. This time, the case prevents him from accompanying his family on a trip to the mountains, but Leon uses their absence, where Brunetti can only occasionally talk with them on the phone, to emphasize certain aspects of their characters and how much they mean to him. She also fleshes out Brunetti's sergeant, Vinaello, and Brunetti's boss, the Vice-Questore Patta. He's been a sort of comic figure until now, the boss the does no work, hogs all the credit, and is always ready to warn Brunetti not to ruffle the wrong feathers. We do get to see a different side of him this time, which was a nice touch.

Leon portrays Italians as very cynical about their government. They fully expect corruption, and while they still grow outraged over it, they don't seem to hold any belief things will change. Which is the sort of attitude I think Americans have (and probably people all over the world), but it's presented as though the Italians believe they have some special monopoly on such attitudes**.

* It would be an interesting touch, especially if Brunetti gradually realizes this seems to happen a lot and starts trying to uncover the truth.

** In Death in a Strange Country, Brunetti noted while on a military base that Americans certainly smiled a lot, which struck him as odd. Do we smile a lot? I don't - I've been told I can be pretty morose - but I didn't have the impression Americans walk around with big grins on their face all the time. Maybe I'm in the wrong part of the country. That was one thing I appreciated about that book I should have mentioned. It provided a different perspective on the U.S.