Iain Pears, The Titian Committee

When an American art historian gets herself murdered in Venice, Flavia de Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad is sent north, not so much to investigate as to represent her department and make a show of being helpful. Further crimes follow, and between meals with art dealer and would-be beau Jonathan Argyll, Flavia becomes more involved in the case than she was supposed to. This is an unwelcome development as far as the local constabulary is concerned: there's a lot in the book about politics within the police department—budget cuts and territoriality—which leads me to wonder whether that sort of thing is ever very interesting on the page.

At any rate, I was seduced into reading this book by the author's writing style, which is certainly good, but I came to regret the decision past the point where I felt comfortable dropping the book. Even after reading the god-awful-boring, thirty-plus-page-long final chapter in which everything that happened is explained in detail to the gathered suspects and reader, I couldn't give a good summary of what happened or even tell most of the characters apart from one another. (Argyll alone shows promise in that regard.) The story just wasn't terribly interesting. Pears can certainly write, but after this ho-hum introduction to his oeuvre I probably won't be grabbing another of his books off the shelves anytime soon.