VENICE-O-METER 9
Thriller set in Venice.
Earlier that day, trailed by Zordyi, Coleman had given him the slip in Merceria. Well, if you couldn’t give someone the slip in Venice, where could you.
With its shifting point of view and its now-I’m-dead-now-I’m-not characters, this thriller is as disorienting as Venice — a city whose labyrinthine nature is explicitly highlighted multiple times in the novel. You keep on wondering who is hunted and who is the hunter, and why oh why, the two protagonists do anything they do.
Highsmith displays towards Venice the unsentimenal outlook she famously displayed towards her characters. She doesn’t shy from the city’s grubbiness — there’s mention of dog poop on the street, splotchy walls, the water making “a piggish sound like schlurp,” and a rat in a canal — and centers much of the action on the island of Giudecca, one of Venice’s least glamorous neighborhoods, if also one of its most genuine and endearing. Some of the places she names don’t seem to exist; there’s no Largo San Sebastiano near San Marco, no Calle Montesino on Giudecca, no Caffè Dino. The places that still exist are listed on the Reading Venice map.
I would suggest reading this together with Daphne du Maurier’s story “Ganymede.” Both narratives take us to tourist-magnet sites (such as Florian’s) as well as gritty blind alleys, and both hinge on an ill-fated speedboat ride after a lavish meal at the Lido that fails to lead to one of the protagonist’s desired outcome.
Reading Venice 