Another solid Brunetti story. As relaxing as a warm bath, these books are charming. It is a real change in detective fiction to be dealing with a detective who is neither alcoholic or in marriage ruined by his job. Brunetti has a wife and two children whom he loves and the backdrop of a Venetian ...
In A Question of Belief, Commissario Brunetti must contend with ingenious corruption, bureaucratic intransigence, and the stifling heat of a Venetian summer. With his hometown beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Brunetti’s greatest wish is to go to the mountains with his f...
I had a hard time getting into this one. Maybe because his wife isn't in it as much? Hard to say. The story wasn't all that interesting to me, though I still love the characters. I've also noticed that the author follows the "Perry Mason" model, where the reader doesn't have enough information to...
Brooding post modern excursion into corruption at almost every level. Illegal disposal of toxic wastes, hospital refuse, and other garbage is big money, with Mafia connections to business leaders, politicos, and labor leaders alike. Garbage from all over Europe is being illegally dumped, someti...
As I'm going out of town soon, have to juggle what I read when (ie, what I take with me and send from where I go)... as I have a few Donna Leons to send to the same person, I realized I should get this one read too. This was perfect for a day with a train journey to take care of some administrati...
This is the first Donna Leon book I have read and I guess it just isn't my thing. It wasn't long enough to properly build intrigue and suspense in the murder mystery. I felt no connection to any of the characters. It was set in Venoce in August and every page had at least one reference to the ...
Una tarde, el comisario Brunetti recibe la llamada desesperada del director de una biblioteca veneciana. Diversos libros antiguos de gran valor han desaparecido. Los bibliotecarios sospechan del hombre que pidió consultar los volúmenes, un catedrático de la Universidad de Kansas. El único proble...
I'm surprised by how miserable a lot of the comments and reviews about this book are. I suspect a lot of that stems from the fact that it's not a Brunetti book - I think it's the only non-series book that Donna Leon has written but I may be wrong about that. I enjoyed it - Leon has stuck with Ve...
Twentieth episode in the Brunetti series but arguably the weakest of the four I have read so far. Certain plot elements are left hanging as if the author was changed course mid-novel. Possibly she stumbled on a very good characterisation in her classic Brunetti theme set piece moment and felt com...
Published in 2012. She has published 22 books in the Guido Brunetti mystery series. I have enjoyed many of these. I am not sure if this is the first book she has written that is a stand alone. I listened to it and there was a lot of Italian in it, but you can follow the story. However, the sto...
Anyone who has ever raised a child can relate to the heartache that Dr. Gustavo Pedrolli experiences when the Carabinieri burst into his home and removed his adopted 18-month-old son from his care, and violently attacked Pedrolli. As it turns out, Pedrolli had gone around the regulations in orde...
3.5 stars actually. One reviewer was repelled by the descriptions of Catholic priests, nuns, and orders and compared this to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. I think that comparison a bit far-fetched, since unlike Brown, Leon does not use thoroughly discredited out-of-date source material to atte...
It would have been easy for Brunetti to grow indifferent to the beauty of the city, to walk in the midst of it, looking and not really seeing. But then it always happened: a window he had never noticed before would swim into his ken, or the sun would gleam in an archway, and he would actually f...
Of all the Donna Leon mysteries I have read, this one was my least favorite. Don't get me wrong - it was very good, full of the usual: well-developed characters,plot twists, and the beautiful sites of Venice. This one was just too melancholy for me, full of the hopelessness of poverty, the ruthle...
Fatal Remedies[return]Donna Leon[return][return]8th in the Commisario Brunetti series, set in Venice, Italy.[return][return]An early morning phone call from the Questura summons Brunetti to complete the arrest, for vandalism, of--Paola, his wife. She s thrown a rock through the window of a trave...
I was wanted to start a new police procedural series and after doing some research decided to begin the Commissario Brunetti series by Donna Leon. The ratings were high on Goodreads and Lj, an avid police procedural reader I follow, rated a number of books in the series quite highly.One of my se...
In Quietly In Their Sleep, a nun, Suorimmacolata, leaves her order and the nursing home it runs when she begins to suspect that some of the patients, those who have left their money to the home, are discreetly being murdered. Turning for help to Guido Brunetti, the suave, subtle and worldly-wise ...
Much crime fiction is transportable. Change the names of the streets, adjust the thermometer, translate the ciao's and the auf widersehen's and the seeya's and the actual mechanics of the plot will often work as well in Rome as they do in Boston or Berlin. But not with Donna Leon's novels. Venice...
Not my favorite Donna Leon-- a bit more grizzly and sordid than some-- but really worth the read for the start of Chapter Twenty-Three, in which our hero, Commissario of Police Guido Brunetti, having a rare night home alone without his wife and children, cooks his supper and reads Tacitus' Annals...
Maria Testa, better known to Brunetti as the nun who once cared for his mother, turns up at the Commissario's door. Maria has left her nursing convent after the suspicious deaths of five patients. Is she creating fears to justify abandoning her vocation, or is there a more sinister scenario?
Brunetti was satisfied to see that he had been right about the coda. It was decorated with sprigs of rosemary, and a radish.t"Why do they do that to food?" he asked, pointing with his chin at the Count's plate.t"Is that a real question or a criticism of the service?" the Count asked.tt"Just a qu...
Though I like or even love all the Donna Leon Commissario Brunetti books I've read so far, I have to admit that this is the closest to a seriously exciting, even horrible, climax that I've read so far. Leon has taken a strong character and given him personal dilemmas that far outweigh the murder...
"Um amigo seu inglês observara, certa ocasião, que viver ali era como viver num loony bin. Brunetti não fazia ideia do que era um loony bin, nem onde ficava, mas isso não o impedira de acreditar que o amigo estava certo. Com o tempo, pôde comprovar que era uma descrição precisa de Itália."O décim...
She dipped a corner of a biscuit in her caffè latte, ate it, and continued. "Never once have I heard anyone say, 'Yes, Gemma's really not very bright, so I understand why she didn't do well in mathematics,' or, 'Nanni is a bit of a dope, you know, especially at languages.' Not a bit of it. The...
In this third novel featuring Guido Brunetti, a body is found so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches the city for someone who can identify the dead man and finds himself confronting another appalling and senseless death.
tShe had been lecturing, recently, on the theme of honor and honorable behavior and the way it was central to Wharton's three great novels, but she was preoccupied with whether the concept still had the same meaning for her students; indeed, whether it had any meaning for her students…. Though s...
I really like Donna Leon. I hope she continues to write forever. Her books are always literate and interesting with marvelous characters. The plots are intricate even if her view of Italian society is dark indeed. For example, in Acqua Alta, a woman is seriously beaten by some thugs. Her partn...
Set in Venice, and featuring the charismatic Commissario Guido Brunetti, this is the fourth novel in Donna Leon's critically acclaimed series.
12th in the Commissario Brunetti series, set in Venice, Italy.[return][return]A young student is found hanging from the ceiling of a bathroom in the military academy of San Martino. It is an apparent suicide. To complicate matters, however, the dead boy is the son of a former politician who ros...
Eigentlich wollte Brunetti mit seiner Familie in die Berge fahren. Doch dann wird vor Mestre die Leiche eines Mannes in Frauenkleidern gefunden. Ein Transvestit? Wird Streitigkeiten mit seinen Freiern gehabt haben – so die allgemeine Meinung, auch bei der Polizei. Brunetti schaut genauer hin und ...
Donna Leon's sweetly cynical Venetian cop Brunetti has his principles, but is always prepared to bend them a little, to appeal to his own Friends in High Places. When bureaucrat Rossi starts to investigate whether his apartment in a historic building has any right to exist, he and his wife start ...
Donna Leon and I have a strange relationship. She's nowhere near the top of my list of favorite detective writers, yet I've read six of her Commissario Brunetti mysteries (sort of how I really don't like Rent all that much, yet through an odd combination of circumstances have seen the show three ...
Neither Commissario Brunetti nor his wife Paola have ever had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, so when a young cadet is found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy, Brunetti's emotions are complex: pity and sorrow for the death of a boy, close in age to his own...
Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without ...
Brunetti gave a vague estimate of the sizes of the pages and stressed that it was essential to the thief that they not be wrinkled or damaged in any way. Raffi, who had been given a Mac Air by his grandparents for Christmas, went to his room and brought it back. He opened it, set it aside, and pu...
A maid opened the door to the street and led him across the herringbone-patterned courtyard, where chrysanthemums still thrived against the east wall. The outside stairway to the first floor was probably original to the palazzo, the lions’ heads worn smooth with age and ...
‘You’re on strike only against them?’ he asked, wanting to clear this up before he asked for her help.‘Of course. If you have something you’d like me to do, I’d be only too happy to abandon this,’ she said, flipping closed the magazine. ‘I don’t know why I bother to read it.’‘That’s exactly what ...
But what was the story? Maria Pia had also said that the people around there had known her for a long time. It should therefore be easy enough to find out about her: all he had to do was find someone who could begin to ask questions. But it had to be the right person, and ...
Ah, perhaps already Deceived by my death Deprived of every hope and counsel Tears of pain flow from her eyes. Mozart, Lucio Silla * * * * Chapter One The shoe was red, the red of London phone booths, New York fire engines, although these were not images that came to the man who first ...
Vianello asked, looking in the same general direction, 'What are you looking for?' 'The roof, to see what sort of angle it has,' Brunetti answered, shielding his eyes from the sun with an upraised hand. They were too close, so they saw only the facade and the underside of the gutters; there was n...
The noise was the one made by the little girl: something prevented him from referring to it as her voice. The other was the strangely parallel conversation he had had with the grandmother: he spoke of threats, and she said they were meaningless, nothing, all the while suggesting that De Cal was a...