Death in a Strange Country
(Libby/OverDrive eBook, Kindle)

Each of these mysteries begins with the discovery of a corpse. Each locale is foreign; each victim is a young, attractive American; and each murder investigation is complicated by political considerations. Leon's is the less complex of the two, although it's plenty gnarly. The second title in her "Death" series featuring the charmingly low-key Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti, it proceeds at an almost leisurely pace. Leon lingers over descriptions of Venice and seems inordinately concerned with what her hero eats and drinks, but her desultory pace is a ruse and actually reflects the way things get done in Italy. While the casual observer might think that all Brunetti is doing is cafe hopping, he's actually uncovering a nasty international scam for the illegal dumping of toxic waste. His mission begins when the body of a healthy young American soldier is found floating in the foul waters of a residential canal. Brunetti is quickly taken off the case, since the powers that be don't want it solved, but he and a comrade clandestinely pursue the truth and slowly expose the links in a chain of corruption that connects wealthy munitions industrialists to the Mafia, the government, the U.S. military, and even Brunetti's own aristocratic father-in-law. A classy, atmospheric, and pleasingly cynical tale.In The Button Man, Freemantle fuses the structure of a murder mystery with the intricacy of an international spy thriller. Moscow is the mise-en-scene, a single thrust of a knife the modus operandi of a serial killer, and the death of Ann Harris, a sexually active American embassy executive, the catalyst for a convoluted investigation that ultimately involves a powerful U.S. senator (Ann's uncle), the FBI, and remnants of the former KGB. Was Ann killed by Paul Hughes, her boss and sadomasochist lover, or by Petr Yezhov, a Russian psychopath? Will Dimitri Danilov, the local detective, cooperate fully with William Cowley, senior FBI man, and vice versa, as they conduct their extremely volatile joint inquiry, or will their competitiveness damage their chances of uncovering the truth? Will Danilov leave his lazy, unkempt wife, Olga, for glamorous Larissa? Can Cowley stand to work with the dislikable man who stole his wife? Every scene and conversation in this meticulously plotted tale is a fencing match or a chess game; every turn of events threatens to topple the dense edifice of politics, lust, subterfuge, and insanity. A real winner by thriller veteran Freemantle, author of the popular Charlie Muffin series. ~--Donna Seaman

The well-fed, muscular body fished from a Venice canal by police Commissario Guido Brunetti's men belongs to an American soldier killed miles away from his base by an expert knife thrust. In seeking motive and murderer, the phlegmatic Brunetti is forced to do end runs around his easily enraged, sycophantic boss Patta, who is more concerned with the tourist trade than with the truth. Patta's bluster increases when Brunetti looks too closely into the theft of artwork belonging to a wealthy and corrupt arms dealer. Stilted dialogue, predictable twists and obvious villains threaten to sink a reasonably intriguing plot linking the Mafia and the U.S. and Italian governments in a massive cover-up of toxic waste dumping. Fortunately, Venice looms large as a well-painted backdrop. Its damp, crumbling beauty and tourist-mobbed sites are as vivid in Leon's ( Death at La Fenice ) depiction as the rich tang of espresso boiling over or the chill of a morgue tucked away on the cemetery island of San Michele. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Something different for Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti, whose first case (Death at La Fenice, 1992) so expertly resurrected the closed-circle whodunit. This time, the murder of Sgt. Michael Foster, public health inspector at the American military hospital at Vicenza, produces such a pronounced lack of reaction--Brunetti's officious boss Patti insists it be written off as a mugging; somebody plants cocaine in Foster's quarters in the hope of heading off further questions; even Foster's lover and commanding officer insists she has no idea why he's been killed--that the fix is clearly in with either the American military or the Italian police. Patti pulls Brunetti off the case to work a burglary from a Grand Canal palazzo, but that--and more sinister high-level skullduggery--are predictably tied in too. No whodunit, but a measured, thoughtful conspiracy investigation that goes a long way toward extending Leon's range. This is definitely an author to watch.