So Shall You Reap
I was hoping that this would be something more akin to a Christie: lots of deep character work, atmospheric Europe, and a solid whodunnit.
This book was, well, nothing like a Christie. It felt (and I promise I don't mean this as harshly as it's going to sound) like NCIS: Venice;
an affable, interesting lead detective, an A/B/C plot with nothing left to subtext, a wise-cracking wife at home, and everything left fairly tidy
at the end of the (short, pleasantly-written) book. It was more of a beach read than a thing requiring digestion, and as far as I can tell that's
exactly what it's meant to be.
But it still wasn't exactly, like, a delight. So many scenes are on the verge of a quiet greatness, and then Leon has to pull out the fourth wall
and spell things out. In a way, I think I would have preferred this as a film, where the excesses of narrative heavy-handedness would have been
shouldered by the camera (and, I'd imagine, many a sumptuous establishing shot of Venice at night.)