Tag: Mystery / Thriller Book Review

It is a luminous spring day in Venice, as Commissario Brunetti and Inspettore Vianello come to the rescue of Vianello’s friend Marco Ribetti, who has been arrested while protesting against chemical pollution of the Venetian lagoon, only to be faced by the fury of Marco’s father-in-law, owner of a glass factory on the island of Murano.

This book is the 15th book in the Commissario Brunetti Series which is sort of a guilty pleasure of mine because every book in this series is a 2 star book but I still love the series and Ill continue to read it as long as Donna Leon will continue to write to new books to this series. 

The characters in this book are pretty basic and to be honest I don’t care for any of the side characters other than the family of the main character. The reason behind this is because every character here seems so boring and it is hard to tell characters apart. In a way every character in this book feels like they were just meant to fill up the space in a way.

Character Development in this whole series doesn’t in a way. Because if you compare this book with the first book in this series then the main character and every other character in this book is just the same.

The writing style in this book is pretty basic and feels like it was written more for teens rather than for adults. It feels like that because of the very easy language used in it.

This book is good when you want to shut down your brain completely after a long day. Because this book doesn’t need any brain power and the less brain power you use on this book the more you will enjoy it. 

The crime in this book didn’t happen until the second half of this book and to be fully honest the entire crime mystery part of this book had just like 10 pages and the rest of this book was just about the main characters’s side job.

This book has no thrill or suspense and it is so fucking slow. But for whatever reason I still had fun with this book and I’ve enjoyed it.

There is no twist at the end because we sort of see what will happen at the end like 50 pages before the ending. Which pretty much kills the twist at the end. But also the ending just leaves us with a cliff-hanger which annoyed me in a way. 

I Give This Book 2 / 5

Commissario Guido Brunetti’s hopes for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are once again dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera – a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse but is met with a wall of silence. He then receives a telephone call from a contact who promises some tantalizing information. And before night is out, Brunetti is confronting yet another appalling, and apparently senseless, death.

Yet again another decent book from the Commissario Brunetti series. Even thou it isn’t the best mystery series I’ve come across, it still managed to drag me in to the universe and I will continue to return to this series.

The mystery here was pretty good and the twist was pretty clear once to came to the middle of this book which really killed the big twist at the end which really annoyed me and it really makes me give a mystery book a low rating when this happens. 

The plot was decent for the most part but there were many moments in this book where the plot focused on other things rather than on the main plot of who killed the victim. Which really annoyed me and it made the book longer than it needed to be. And the plot also felt pretty awkward just because the main character made it super awkward when he was talking to or about transvestites and the entire sex selling industry. Which really annoyed me because we are in 2022 and we should be more comfortable to talk about it now.

The writing style here was petty basic but it in a way fitted in with the rest of the story in a way. But of course it didn’t fit for a mystery novel which this book was in the end. 

This book is in the end a good and light read for bedtime reading right before you go to sleep. This book is good when you don’t use your brainpower on it. 

When you read this book it feels like it was written in like 1950s or something around it and not in 1994. Because this book keep telling us that people who are working in the sex selling industry or just like the rest of us and that everyone need to do something to survive. Which is a very old perspective on it I guess.

I give this book 2 / 5

Detective Guido Brunetti is submerged in the seedy Venetian underworld as he tries to crack a prostitution ring run by wealthy and powerful citizens

I gotta say that I enjoy this series so far but to be honest it isn’t the best mystery series. 

The plot here was okay but of course it wasn’t the mind blower. The plot in this book is okay for the most part and it is good when you want to read a mystery book but also want to turn off your brain for a while. The plot of this book is easy and you don’t need brain power to enjoy this book.

The writing style was pretty basic here and it felt like it was meant for a high school student. But I don’t mind that because it was on the level with the plot which is the opposite of heavy and super highly planed with details of the crimes and twists at the end. 

The ending is okay for the most part but it was satisfying but of course it doesn’t have an happy ending of a murder case being solved. Which Ive enjoyed because again it was on the level with the rest of this book. 

The twist here was kind of obvious here. It was obvious who the killer was when the main character have meet her the first time in this book. Which really the twist at the end didn’t exist and killed itself in a way.

The characters here were very weak but the main character is so simple that it makes him to a likeable character. To be honest I don’t care about the side characters in this book because they have nothing unique about them which makes them worth remembering but the main character is like the only thing which makes me coming back to the “Commissar Guido Brunetti” series. 

I give this book 2 / 5

The garrison town of Highcliff is on tenterhooks waiting for the return of the last British soldiers from war-torn Helmand. Meanwhile, as one of the last remaining platoons prepare to leave its isolated post for the final time, 19-year-old Private Pete Lyons is taken hostage during the night. A patrol sent to rescue him finds itself in a bloody and disastrous fire-fight.

This book is easily the worst mystery book I’ve read so far. And I gotta say as well that I ended up DNF-ing this book because it was pure torture trying to read this book.

The plot of this book was really weak and it didn’t feel like a mystery book but rather as a tragedy book. Because every chapter was from someone else’s perspective and every single chapter had million bad things happening in it. Which really pissed me off because it totally drained my energy.

The plot was really weak and not engaging at all. It just felt like the author wanted to write something to get some money from the sell of it and nothing more than that.

The writing style was pretty good but of course the plot of it made it hundred times worse and the writing style just couldn’t make it better because there were so many things bad with this book. 

The characters in this book were super bad as well and it felt like the author just didn’t bother to make characters which the readers would care about. All of the characters in this book were like “this character is named so and so and lets move on to the other characters because this character doesn’t have anything special with it and the character is just the same as the rest of the characters in this book”.

I give this book 1 / 5

Early one morning Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something is discovered in the victim’s apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime.

This is my second book in the Commissario Brunetti series which isn’t the best mystery series. It is in fact very far from it but it has something to it which makes it special at least to me. The fact that it happens in Venice, Italy aka a small town in Italy makes this series very special because I never come across a mystery series taking place in a small town in Italy. 

The plot in this book was good but there were a lots of moments where the author had trailed off and focus on things which wasn’t important for the plot. But the overall plot and the main mystery was very good, but there were a lots of moments which should have been removed from the book because they were just taking us away from the main problem in this book. 

The ending here really ruined the entire book because it pretty much went like “that is the guy who killed these people but don’t ask how and with what”. The ending pretty much gave us the killer without explain how he killed people or when or where which really ruined this entire book for me and I know that it will ruin the book for many other people. 

There were no twist at the end because it was obvious who the killer was from like page 150 or so. 

When it comes to the characters here I really like the main character here which of course is Commissario Guido Brunetti which really makes me want to continue reading this series even when it isn’t good. There are some other side characters which work with the main characters which I also enjoy because they feel like real people in a way but not complete real. However there are some characters here which just seem like they were made to just fill up the page with something.

I give this book 2 / 5

Joe is done with the cities. He’s done with the muck and the posers, done with Love. Now, he’s saying hello to nature, to simple pleasures on a cozy island in the Pacific Northwest. For the first time in a long time, he can just breathe. He gets a job at the local library—he does know a thing or two about books—and that’s where he meets her: Mary Kay DiMarco. Librarian. Joe won’t meddle; he will not obsess. He’ll win her the old-fashioned way: by providing a shoulder to cry on, a helping hand. Over time, they’ll both heal their wounds and begin their happily ever after in this sleepy town. The trouble is, Mary Kay already has a life. She’s a mother. She’s a friend. She’s busy.

I was super excited to read this book because I loved the first two books in this series and I had high expectations for this book. AndI gotta say that this book didn’t live up to all of mine expectations for it.

After reading this book I gotta say that the series is going downhill, unfortunately. The first book in this series was amazing, the second book was less amazing than the first but still amazing and this book was just okay. Which is a huge disappointed to me.

The writing style is still amazing which really made me glad to see. Because the writing style in this series is really the whole spirit of why I like it so much as I do. The writing style is very enjoyable, super engaging and it really it makes you see everything you read in your head.

The plot in this book is good enough. But I gotta say that it could have been better because after all we are talking about a book series about the infamous Joe Goldberg. What I’m trying to say is that the plot isn’t good enough for Joe Goldberg. Of course, it had some good moments here and there but still that wasn’t enough.

This book reveals what happened what happened after The Hidden Bodies had ended and it really disappointed me what have happened after the actions in the second books. Because after I read The Hidden Bodies I was really rooting for Joe to finally have some happiness in this life.

In my opinion this book shows that Joe becomes too soft after becoming a father between the end of The Hidden Bodies and the beginning of this book. And that thing really annoyed me for whatever reason.

Also it seems like this character focuses more on other characters instead of Joe. And as you might think I didn’t go well with me. Because when I picked up this book I wanted to read more about Joe and less about other characters which not gonna be in the rest of the series or at least no gonna have major role in the rest of the series.

It also annoyed me that the author of this book had made Joe a victim at the end instead of the guilty one. And it also seemed like everything had turned out way too connivant for Joe without him doing anything major.

However, I’ve still enjoyed it and had fun reading this one. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed the first two books but still I’ve enjoyed it.

However, I think that this book will be the place where a lot of fans really fall away from this series. Which is sad because this problem could have been avoided if the plot was more about Joe and the monster he is rather than poor Joe who isn’t telling the full picture to his new obsession.

And the two twists at the end aren’t that good as they could be of they were presented to us in a different way.

I give this book 3 / 5