Point of View

Death at La Fenice is written in the third person with a semi-omniscient narrator, from the point of view of Commissario Brunetti. The reader follows Brunetti throughout his investigation and follows along with Brunetti's thoughts, ruminations, and reactions to what goes on around him. The semi-omniscient narration allows the reader to accompany Brunetti on his investigation, and experience the clues as they are revealed to the detective. This allows the reader to play Watson to Brunetti's Holmes, trying to keep up with (or jump ahead of) him in the investigation as it proceeds.

Though Brunetti's thoughts and feelings are often revealed as he ruminates over the characters he meets and the conversations he has, few of his thoughts about the crime itself are revealed. He tells his wife near the beginning of the novel that he does not work by intuition and does not guess at...