Compulsively readable with an unassuming, graceful prose…
The exotic Venetian settings and Commissario Guido Brunetti’s old-school investigative methods are very charming, but it is the character-driven narrative that makes Donna Leon’s Brunetti series highly addictive. In this 28th Brunetti novel, Brunetti is urged by his father-in-law Count Falier to investigate the seemingly innocent plan of his best friend Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada’s adoption of an adult male as his son. Despite his reluctance to intervene in personal affairs of the elderly Gonzalo, Brunetti agrees to look into the matter, but Gonzalo dies soon after. The investigation becomes a homicide affair after one of Gonzalo’s close lady friends is found strangled in her hotel room. The victim has arrived in the city for Gonzalo’s memorial service. It’s up to Commissario Brunetti to solve the mystery now. Tagging along Brunetti, readers marvel at the antiquity and majesty of the city and experience Brunetti’s musings: they get to read another classic and see the city like a native Venetian while the former solves the murder in his usual style—by concentrating on the people behind the crime rather than on the crime. The case changes with every new book, but Leon’s sleuth is the same guy as ever; he still reads, appreciates good food and wine, deals sensitively with victims of crimes, is happily married and have great kids, thousands of things still bother him as always, and he is very much a humane cop. There are a few misleading diversions, but that wouldn’t stop readers from enjoying Leon’s latest slow burning mystery.
