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Content snapshot
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Violence
Some
A murder investigation; the slaughterhouse setting involves distressing animal content
Language
Barely any
Mild language
Sexual Content
None
No sexual content
Substance Use
Barely any
Mild content
Emotional Intensity
Some
The ethical questions surrounding industrial slaughter as a setting for investigating human violence; Brunetti's ability to hold difficult truths without imposing a conclusion
What this book is about
A man is found drowned in a Venice canal — identified eventually as the on-site veterinarian at a slaughterhouse on the mainland. Commissario Brunetti investigates both the death and the slaughterhouse, and the novel becomes an examination of industrial animal slaughter and the specific moral questions that surround it. Donna Leon's twenty-second Brunetti novel is her most direct engagement with questions of animal welfare, and Brunetti's discomfort with what he finds in the slaughterhouse world is rendered honestly without becoming polemical.
Notes for sensitive readers
Reader-flagged moments and themes that may affect your experience.
twenty-second Brunetti novel by Donna Leon; animal welfare themes
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