Dressed for Death

By: Donna Leon

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Commissario Guido Brunetti's hopes for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera--a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse but is met with a wall of silence. He then receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some tantalizing information. And before night is out, Brunetti is confronting yet another appalling, and apparently senseless, death.

©1994 Donna Leon (P)2009 BBC Audio

Another great Inspector Brunetti story that does not disappoint.

As always seeped in Venetian life, history and social issues, Donna Leon creates a great plot involving greed and corruption.

Great read

A very easy and enjoyable read which made me feel I was in Venice. I will read the others in the series.

Great mystery series.

I’m a huge fan of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache. If you are too, you’ll equally love Commissario Guido Brunetti. Great characters, great descriptions of scenery and food of Venice, great plot lines. A brilliant and sweet wife and his sidekick Vianello.
Narrator does a terrific job.

This is my favorite in the series so far

I havent read the whole series, nor have I read them in order, but this one definitely kept my attention better than the others I have heard.
Commissario Guido is called to a crime scene where the body of what appears to be a transvestite prostitute. However, something doesn't seem quite right to the Commissario and he refuses to just write the crime off because of the type of victim. Besides, the corpse has a body much like Guido's own and he doubts this is a figure people would pay for.
From the undercover world of the gay and transvestite scene in Venice to the seedy and even more covert world of Italian finance Guido must ferret out the truth while staying alive and thwarting very powerful men.
Honestly, the ways in which the characters have to confront ideas of italian masculinity in this maybe what amused me the most. However, it does have a good amount of action as well.

MY NEWEST "GUILTY PLEASURE" IN BOOK SERIES

Gotta love Italian police detective Guido Brunetti! Author Donna Leon serves up Venetian life with a side a great food and wines. The characters are well-rounded and the subject matter is deeply researched. I'm working my way through the entire series and I'm hoping that the missing audiobooks will be available soon.

I am so happy to have found this series

Any additional comments?

I am so happy to have found this series with the wonderful Commissario Guido Brunetti. Raised on Hercule Poirot and falling in love with Chief Inspector Armand Gamache in the Louise Penny’s Three Pines Mysteries, I was searching for another similar series with a smart and likable lead character. I tried the NYPD sergeant Kathleen Mallory series by Carol O'Connell and was very disappointed with the cardboard characters . I am looking forward to listening to all the books with Brunetti and getting to know and like him even more.

Enjoyable with a twist

Clever story
Interesting and believable characters
Thank you Donna Leon.
Love the setting, beautiful Venice. And the family- exquisite, excellent

Meh!

Donna Leon's series has been so highly recommended by so many people for so long that I finally downloaded this book. I found the first half to be very slow-moving, as Leon carefully seeded her plot with clues, red herrings and domestic details. The villains were almost immediately identified, and painted with a very broad brush; the murder "twist" was quickly obvious; the observations on Venetian life only moderately interesting. Then the second half just kind of stumbled to a conclusion. Leon seems very impressed with the decency of her decent characters, which gives the book an odd air of self-satisfaction.

But perhaps it's the narration I found the most off-putting. The narrator is American, so the descriptive bits feel quite transparent to this listener. But, if every single one of your characters is Italian, why adopt an Italian accent in the dialogue? It's not as if we need to distinguish among nationalities (as we did in Neal Stephenson's "Reamde", for instance, or Jess Walter's "Beautiful Ruins"). It puts an unnecessary distance between the listener and the characters, as if they are "colorful characters" rather than people.

Due diligence

Venice Italy, law-enforcement, murder-investigation

This is my first foray into the world of Commissario Brunetti but it certainly won't be the last! The only difference in the police work from other law enforcement areas it that it is all by water and not by roadways. Otherwise, policework is much the same everywhere and this book is a fine example of due diligence in a murky social sphere. Well written and I loved it!
David Colacci has the perfect delivery

Loved It!

As always, Leone wrote a thought-provoking novel, and Colacci provided us with a captivating reading!