The second installment in Donna Leon’s Brunetti series follows closely the pattern set in the first. The plot is not the priority. An American soldier serving at an army base in Vicenza is stabbed and his body dumped in a canal in Venice. Brunetti is assigned to solve a case that looks at first like a mugging gone wrong, but he soon starts to uncover much darker criminal and political shenanigans. Leon’s heart is not really in the whodunnit part of all of this. Her interest is in the character of Brunetti and, perhaps to an even greater degree, in that of Venice itself, and it is already clear that’s going to be the great strength of this series. Just as in the earlier novel, the resolution of the mystery comes along very late in the story and the explanation of the crime is hurried and unsatisfying. That doesn’t matter very much. Brunetti and Venice are getting more interesting with every installment.