Early one morning Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something is discovered in the victim’s apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime.

This is my second book in the Commissario Brunetti series which isn’t the best mystery series. It is in fact very far from it but it has something to it which makes it special at least to me. The fact that it happens in Venice, Italy aka a small town in Italy makes this series very special because I never come across a mystery series taking place in a small town in Italy. 

The plot in this book was good but there were a lots of moments where the author had trailed off and focus on things which wasn’t important for the plot. But the overall plot and the main mystery was very good, but there were a lots of moments which should have been removed from the book because they were just taking us away from the main problem in this book. 

The ending here really ruined the entire book because it pretty much went like “that is the guy who killed these people but don’t ask how and with what”. The ending pretty much gave us the killer without explain how he killed people or when or where which really ruined this entire book for me and I know that it will ruin the book for many other people. 

There were no twist at the end because it was obvious who the killer was from like page 150 or so. 

When it comes to the characters here I really like the main character here which of course is Commissario Guido Brunetti which really makes me want to continue reading this series even when it isn’t good. There are some other side characters which work with the main characters which I also enjoy because they feel like real people in a way but not complete real. However there are some characters here which just seem like they were made to just fill up the page with something.

I give this book 2 / 5