Maybe not quite as good as her best Brunetti novels, but it was still a pleasure to read. Donna Leon knows how to weave some very worrying topics into the story, such as the quality of the water we drink and the effect of mass tourism on the local living environment and the air. Even more so, though, through Brunetti she raises the reader's awareness of the decisions that have to be taken when it comes to punishing criminals. Deciding who to punish and who to ignore for the greater good of society can be a difficult ethical decision. It is one that Brunetti has to make by the end of the book. An interesting read.

If you've ever considered a vacation in Venice in mid-summer, the newest Donna Leon procedural will dissuade you. The weather is so hot even Guido Brunetti, Leon' s affable, literate, reflective police detective, can't stop thinking, feeling ,and describing it; it; in fact, the heat and humidity are practically characters in this unusually slow and torpid novel. The case involves a dying woman's last declarations about the death if her husband, a chemist with the largest water distributor in the Veneto, and the "bad money" that led to his death, which she insists with her final breath was a murder.. It has to do with falsified water samples that lead directly to the money, the murder, and the difficulties in punishing the environmental crimes that toe them together..
It's usually a pleasure to spend time with Brunetti, his clever and understanding wife, and his wonderful Secretary, as well as the minor characters Leon is so skilled at creating. But the heat must have gotten to her while she was writing this, one of her lesser novels.