Dressed for Death

De: Donna Leon

Narrado por: David Colacci

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

Excellent...!!!

Yes an excellent mystery Tale exceptionally well written and narrated. the Pastiche of Venice in all its grandeur and squalor is most visual and had me traipsing along with the commissario and his crew as they stepped off boats onto Landings to ferret out Clues and criminals. I'm very pleased to have found this series and look forward to all of the remaining entries.👍👍👍👍

Nice change.

The change of location (other than Britain or U.S.) made the book more interesting. Unique for me.

Great book

This is one of the best crime mysteries I have discovered in a long time. I am so glad there are a lot more books I had that I can read and listen to! The writing and sense of place are excellent and the story keeps drawing you in.

Venice!

another terrific visit with the Brunetti"s in Venice. one good location based tale after another. reader on the money.

Commissioner Brunetti snares another killer!

Love the understated perseverance of our hero Brunetti as he navigates the lace like web of clues!

Boring

Not much action. Mostly dialogue. If you speak Italian, there are a few little inside jokes that will make you chuckle. But, other than that I lost interest and entire chapters went by before I realized I wasn’t even paying attention.

Great Donna Leon story

As usual I love her Brunetti stories. This was an especially good one and I will love working my way through all of them.

excellent

I loved the story, characters and presentation. Reading my way through all of them. Hearing it read in that wonderful accent brings the story to life.

3.5 stars

3.5 stars. Enjoyed another Commissario Brunetti book. Interesting plot, and always enjoy the likable characters Brunetti and wife.

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.