Death at La Fenice by Donna Leon
This is the first book in the Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries set in Venice. I've read a few of them, but not in the series order and decided to go back and start at the beginning.
This book opens as the intermission at an opera is ending and the conductor Helmut Wallauer doesn't appear. He is found in his dressing room, apparently dead by poison.
The police are called and Brunetti ends up on the case, looking for motive and opportunity. Of course, there is a lot of bustle behind the scenes at the theater and lots of opportunities for people to have approached Wellauer. As he talks with a variety of people, he finds that while the man was revered as a great conductor, he wasn't a nice man at all.
There is some questions about whether he colluded with the Nazis during the war, or just entertained them, and he has had an impact on many careers by putting his influence against someone.
As with the later novels in the series that I read, Venice is brought to life here as Brunetti walks its streets, travels its canals and ventures beyond the inner city to other neighbourhoods and even beyond in one instance. We also see him as his interacts with his superior and other police officers and we see his home life, not just with his wife Paola and his children, who are teenagers here, but also with his in-laws.
The plot was interesting and this was definitely one that kept me reading to find out what was behind the crime.
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