Point of View

The story is told from the point of view of a third-person narrator. It is not clear how much the narrator knows about what is going on. To some extent, the narrator seem omniscient, since he can see into the deep thoughts of Captain Bellodi or the Little Priest. At other times, though, the narrator does not even name the characters in a scene, instead just presenting a conversation as a series of quotes. This could indicate that the narrator does not know very much about what is going on in these scenes, but it feels more like he is holding information back from the reader. This makes sense, since this is a detective story, and the narrator does not want to reveal too much, too early in the story. However, the anonymity of many characters could have more to do with emphasizing the secrecy of...