Commissario Guido Brunetti is possibly the worst cop on a TV series. He has no imagination and wouldn't recognize a clue if he tripped over it. He is pretty much unaided by his second in command Sergente Lorenzo Vianello; and his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, does everything he can to derail cases as he is a political animal who responds to any pull of a string that his puppeteer masters can yank. The cases do get "solved" but it is pretty much due to dumb luck. And to make matters worse, Brunetti's family is even more boring than he is. In his first case, Vendetta, three well off men are murdered, and if the daughter of one of the murdered men hadn't been a casual friend of Brunetti's daughter Chiara, and passed on an incriminating video tape, then the killer would have gone free. And even then, when Brunetti offers the killer police protection if they will testify, they look at Brunetti and inquire if he is that naive or just stupid. He drops the ball of course and the suspect is killed while in police custody, so those really deserving punishment never do get caught. In the second story, The Anonymous Venetian, it is a persistent shopkeeper who helps Brunetti get his arrest. If the guy had just shrugged and said well I tried then that murderer also would have gone free. Maybe the books are better written but this series offers no compelling reason to watch. Even the setting of Venice gets short shrift as there are only so many times you can run a camera through Piazza San Marco without that becoming boring also.
Review of Donna Leon
