A Sea of Troubles - gebunden oder broschiert

London published Crime Fiction, The Venetian Lagoon is full of small island communities who do things their own way, and hardly acknowledge the authority of the local police, let alone the Italian state. When, in A Sea of Troubles two Pellestrina fishermen are murdered, and their boat set alight, Commisario Brunetti has trouble finding anyone in the small barren fishing port who will talk to him, let alone help him catch the killer. The only person able to break through to them is his elegant friend and ally Elettra, who has relatives there with whom she regularly stays--Brunetti neither wants to put her at risk nor cares to examine too closely why he cares so very much what happens to her... As always with Leon's chatty bittersweet novels of police procedure, this is stronger on emotion than on puzzle--the actual process whereby Brunetti finds out who killed unpleasant old Giulio and personable young Marco is solidly laid out, but not especially unpredictable. What is important to us, though, is her undoubted capacity to take us through the emotions--Elettra's combination of excitement at actually doing police investigation rather than office politics with a rebound fling with a local fisherman; Brunetti's concern that he is getting in over his head emotionally. --Roz Kaveney