Commissario Guido Brunetti

Guido Brunetti is a commissario of police in Venice, Italy, assigned to investigate the murder of famed conductor Helmut Wellauer. Brunetti is a seasoned investigator, and he feels that the main way to understand the crime is to understand the victim. Brunetti realizes immediately that a lot of the information that he gets about Wellauer is superficial, about the man as a musician instead of about the inner man. Wellauer seeks to reveal Wellauer's inner character in order to understand the crime that has occurred.

Brunetti is a family man, deeply in love with his wife Paola. His work life has a lot of stresses. He endures an incompetent and demanding boss, pressure from the press, and the distress of crime. At home, he finds Paola comforting and calming. Brunetti stays up late working at his job and wakes up cranky in the morning, but Paola...