The Anonymous Venetian (called Dressed for Death in the US edition) is the third book in Donna Leon’s Brunetti series. It begins, just like the earlier stories, with the discovery of a corpse. On this occasion, the victim, a man dressed in women’s clothes, has been brutally attacked and left on waste ground near a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Venice. It’s outside Brunetti’s jurisdiction, but the summer is here and the other detectives are enjoying their vacations.

Working within the tight constraints of the genre and with the limitations that a series inevitably imposes, Donna Leon has a serious intention here, to uncover the conservatism of Italian society and how its judgements on sexual behavior further victimize the victims of crime. Brunetti has his prejudices, neatly exposed and confronted here by his more humane and sympathetic wife, Paola.

The novel shares too many similarities with its immediate predecessors. It was probably a mistake to read the first three novels in the Brunetti series back-to-back. The flaws showed up too clearly, flaws that might have stayed hidden or been less obvious if I had allowed some time to elapse between the novels. I plan to read more in the series, but for now I need a break from the Venetian detective.