The New York Times-bestselling series transports us to “Donna Leon’s enticing, troubled and beautiful Venice . . . Her latest mystery is one of her best” (Providence Journal). A New York Times Book Review Best Crime Book of the Year * A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice * A Financial Times Summer Book Pick * A Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine Most Anticipated Mystery of the Year … Book Pick * A Deadly Pleasures Mystery Magazine Most Anticipated Mystery of the Year
Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised by the appearance of a friend of his wife’s, fearful that her son is using drugs and hopeful Brunetti can somehow intervene. When the woman’s husband is found unconscious with a serious brain injury at the foot of a bridge in Venice after midnight, Brunetti is drawn to pursue a possible connection to the boy’s behavior. But the truth, as Brunetti has experienced so often, is not straightforward.
While Brunetti pursues several false and contradictory leads, he becomes exasperated by the petty bureaucracy that constantly bedevils him and threatens to expose Signorina Elettra, his superior’s secretary. But steadied by the embrace of his own family and by his passion for the classics, he reads Sophocles’s Antigone, and, in its light, considers the terrible consequences to which the actions of a tender heart can lead.
“It’s the living, bleeding humanity of the characters that makes Donna Leon’s police procedurals so engaging. . . . Tagging along after this sleuth is a wonderful way to see Venice like a native.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“[A] droll and intelligent series.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“[A] richly rewarding series . . . from a master of character-rich crime fiction.” ―Booklist
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typically excellent donna leon work
donna león has an ongoing family of the comesario his wife and children, also there is no car chases, shooting or violence and the endings are not neatly wrapped uo
I have read every book in Donna Leon’s series about Commissario Brunetti. I race through the first reading but like to go back later to pick up on the nuances that I missed. I recommend these books to anyone who likes a mystery told in beautiful language. And the food!!!
Lyrical descriptions of Venetian life and the central figure’s evolving sense of law and justice in the face of a devolving political and legal system.
I always love visiting Venice with Guido Brunetti.
All of Leon’s books in this series are incredible. Such a great view of Venetian life.
Italy these days takes a beating in Donna Leone’s books, from local corruption to poor adaptation to modernization to the idiocy of the bureaucracy. But her depiction of relationships is essentially Italian. Her characters have a fundamental respect one another, whether in a marital relationship, the dreaded in-law differences, across educational levels, between parent and adolescent child, and finally, at the heart of this book, between elder and protoge. Conflicts are neither dismissed nor exaggerated, just accepted. An unusual feature: we never know who “did it,” or who was the “bad guy.” And I for one didn’t care. I was simply sad to leave Ms. Leone’s world when I completed the last page.