Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon (Commissario Brunetti #2) * * * *

Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon was published in 1993 and is the second novel in the Commissario Brunetti series. I read it as part of the 2026 PopSugar Reading Challenge, for the prompt “A book that makes you want to travel to Italy” though whether any book needs to convince me of that feels almost beside the point.

In retrospect, it’s an unusual choice for the prompt. This is not a romantic or sun-drenched novel of Italy, rather a sombre, politically charged, and often quite bleak. Yet Venice is present in every page, not as a postcard backdrop but as a lived-in city of canals, offices, homes, and compromises. That, in its own way, still counts.

The novel opens with Brunetti being called to a body pulled from a Venetian canal, later identified as a young American soldier. His investigation leads him beyond Venice to the American base in Vicenza, and from there into a widening web of secrecy, institutional power, and corruption. At first, the story feels slightly unmoored, as if it’s not entirely clear what kind of crime novel this wants to be. By the end, it becomes apparent that the murders are almost secondary; the real subject is corruption, and how deeply it permeates systems that claim to represent order and protection.

Reading this alongside my Italian studies collided the two worlds I'm inhabiting. The novel is very much of its time, reflecting early-1990s Italy, when political corruption was widely exposed and trust in institutions was badly eroded. Interestingly enough, this was the topic we were actually covering in Italian.

As with the previous book, Death at La Fenice, the ending is not clean or comforting. Justice is partial at best, and resolution comes with a bitter aftertaste. There is a noticeable increase in violence compared to the first book, and death accumulates to an unexpected number. It reinforces the sense that Brunetti operates in a world where the law can only ever do so much.

One of the strongest elements of the novel is Brunetti’s home life. His marriage, in particular, is portrayed with warmth and quiet intimacy. His wife Paola is intelligent, principled, and deeply supportive. Their conversations and shared meals offer moments of emotional grounding that contrast sharply with the moral murk of his work. Her aristocratic background adds another subtle layer to the novel’s exploration of class and power, especially as her family’s influence brushes up against the investigation in unexpected ways. These scenes with their warmth and domesticity ground Brunetti and the reader in times where things feel more and more overwhelming.

There are also moments of dry humour, especially early on, that break the tension without undermining it. A scene involving the coroner’s assumptions about how fit American bodies were in general, filtered through pop-culture stereotypes, genuinely made me laugh and felt very true to its era.

This is not a cheerful book, nor is it meant to be. It is thoughtful, unsettling, and quietly absorbing, more interested in moral residue than dramatic twists. I enjoyed it a great deal and rated it four stars. It’s a novel that doesn’t offer comfort, but it does offer honesty and that is precisely why it works.