At a dinner party given by his parents-in-law, Commissario Brunetti meets Franca Marinello, the wife of a prosperous Venetian businessman. He's charmed - perhaps not too charmed, suggests his wife Paola - by Signora Marinello's love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance.
A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabiniere Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse - and more sinister material - in his company's trucks. No stranger to mutual suspicion and competition between rival Italian police departments, Brunetti is nevertheless puzzled by the younger man's paranoid behaviour.

Eventually Guarino agrees to email a photo of his suspect, but by the time the photo arrives, he himself is dead. Was he killed because he got too close? And why is it taht France Marinello has often been seen in the company of the suspect, a vulgar man with Mafia connections and a violent past?

A typical Brunetti story, which I have already read before but did not remember everything. Still it was entertaining as always...

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