Donna's comments about the book: "Death in a Strange Country, which is the second of the books deals with the murder of a young American soldier. There’s an American military base, an army base, about an hour from Venice to the West. And in this book a young American soldier comes up dead floating around in one of the canals. He’s been stabbed to death. And it looks like an open and shut case--a mugging. Of course in murder mysteries it’s never an open and shut case, so Brunetti has to investigate. And he goes out to the military base which gave me a great deal of fun because I worker there for a long time. It allows me to allow an Italian to look at the American military base and see this other planet which is only an hour from Venice. Because it is another planet. There’s Baskin Robbins and Burger King and frozen pizza and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and even an American church so that they have the right God. And there’s those gargantuanly fat Americans lumbering about on the base and he uncovers that the murder of the young American soldier was committed in order to coverup something else. The more he investigates the more he realizes the international ramifications of this coverup, which are really pretty creepy--AND TRUE! AND TRUE!"
(Transcribed from a video inverview shown on the Random House UK website, 2005)
JACKET NOTES: DEATH IN THE CANAL. Venice in the early morning is a picture of tranquillity. Until the day the serenity is shattered by the gruesome discovery of a body floating in a canal. Resisting pressure from his politically motivated superior to wrap up the case in a tourist-friendly package, Commissario Guido Brunetti probes deeper into the unlikely circumstances of the American's death. The wry and witty Brunetti's thoughtful deliberations land him knee-deep in a toxic waste cover-up controlled by three of the most influential powers in the world--the Italian government, the U.S. Army and the Mafia. Under their watchful eyes Brunetti must decide how far he can go to right a global wrong--and If he can stay alive doing it.
(©Harper Paperbacks)
