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 series’ criteria was to have an interesting central character. In a long running series, I want the police officer solving the crime to have a lot of depth, both personal strengths and foibles and to be very human and someone I can relate to. While I sometimes like intricate plots in standalone mysteries or thrillers, when investing in reading a series, great characters and character development are a must. I like to get to know the people in the series and enjoy the company of people I am spending so much time with. Commissario Guido Brunetti seemed to have lots of interests and looked like he would meet the interesting police officer criteria. The clincher however was the series locale. I have been fond of Italian culture in general and particularly fascinated by Venice, the city of love, beauty, water and canals. What better way to visit a city and country and soak everything up than as an arm chair traveller enjoying an ongoing book series?Death at La Fenice, Book 1 in the Commissario Brunetti series didn’t disappoint. The central character turned out to be as interesting and complex as I’d thought. His thought patterns, demeanour, processes and family all intrigued me. Brunetti is married to a smart working wife named Paola from a well connected family who is successful in her own right. He is a father to two engaging children who are polar opposites – a precocious daughter named Chiara who loves math and a Raffaele (Raffi), a socialist son who is not a big fan of the establishment. My sense is that Brunetti is a sensitive, small “l” liberal in general and encourages his family and others to be critically independent thinkers and to live and let live.Besides his family members, the book’s other characters - his friends, colleagues, boss, the murder victim, witnesses and specialists consulted by Brunelli were all vividly developed and interesting. This series definitely has the makings of an intriguing ensemble cast.The city of Venice played a key role and was a strong character. I quite liked the Venetian life style described and Guido Brunetti and his family. I am looking forward to getting to know everyone better and to seeing more of Commissario Brunetti in action.The plot development is in Death at La Fenice is rather leisurely which was a bit unexpected but nonetheless enjoyable. There weren’t a lot of twists and turns and often minimal information was provided. I suspect the pace was quite realistic and comparable to a real life police officer’s investigation, particularly in a city such as Venice. I felt like I was accompanying Brunetti and right beside him during his visits and interviews with suspects. His investigations felt more like chats with people than business like interrogations. I suspect that Brunetti’s personableness and conversational style will turn out to be one of his investigative strengths – being able to connect with witnesses and murderers and getting them to talk and open up to him.All and all a good start to what I hope will be a terrific police procedural series.
I enjoyed this book a lot; sat down and read it in a day. As is often the case, I came back to the first book in a series after having read a few of the later ones. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not – but at least I know that I like the later ones. This is indeed the first book in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in and featuring the city of Venice. But strangely for me, it immediately featured a character (Brett Lynch) who had already featured in one of the subsequent books I had already read! We also meet many of the characters who will populate the subsequent books – his politically-savvy, but police-work-ignorant boss; his wife and children, his in-laws, and perhaps most of all, the city of Venice, whose waterways and eating places are lovingly described throughout. The books are not so much mysteries as a stroll around Venice, commenting on its people and places and the changes taking place in the venerable city, from the effects of acid rain to the burgeoning tourists forcing out the shops that the dwindling numbers of locals use. Interestingly, the crime takes place in a site that is a part of Venetian history itself. The Teatro La Fenice opera house, the place of the title, burned down since the book was published, and like the Phoenix of its name, was rebuilt later. In this story, a famous German music conductor is found dead from cyanide poisoning in his dressing room in the opera house, between the second and third acts of La Traviata. Brunetti goes about solving the problem in the old-fashioned way – with shoe-leather and personal visits to the suspects and witnesses. The conductor turns out to have been not a very nice person (though a great conductor) so suspects are plentiful. He also has a wife some 30 years younger than he was, and is immediately suspected by Brunetti’s wife (who always gets it wrong, we are told). In addition, the conductor survived World War 2 by collaborating with the Nazi regime. Is that a factor? The book is well written and easy to read. It has the flavor of Maigret, but with more actual detecting. I will continue to dip into the series, perhaps in sequence next time!
What do You think about Death At La Fenice (2004)?
“Death at La Fenice,” written in 1992, is a fine introduction to Donna Leon’s popular Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series. I wouldn’t stick with the series based on the plot alone, which was hardly compelling, but the characters of Guido and Paola Brunetti; the setting, that one-of-a-kind city, Venice; and the strong recommendations of two friends make me eager for more.I was taken with Commissario Brunetti at once. He is bright, wry, and eminently practical, and knows just how to handle his superior, the bumbling and self-aggrandizing Vice-Questore Patta, who likes throwing his weight around and making unreasonable demands. Brunetti has a wonderful wife, a Henry James scholar, college professor, and daughter of wealth and power. The interactions of the couple are tender and often funny. And Venice! This eloquent description of the city is just one example of how Leon makes you feel you are right there: “Once the capital of the dissipations of a continent, Venice had become a sleepy provincial town that virtually ceased to exist after nine or ten at night. During the summer months, she could remember her courtesan past and sparkle, as long as the tourists paid and the good weather held, but in the winter, she became a tired old crone, eager to crawl early to bed, leaving her deserted streets to cats and memories of the past.”Engaging characters, alluring setting, and fine writing, plus a nice bit of intrigue to keep the pages turning: perfect light reading when I need a break from my more usual fare of serious fiction.
—Jan
Reading this book reminded me why I can't usually find in genre fiction what satisfies me in a novel. I think this is a pretty good example of genre fiction. It does not flaunt, for example, the deliberately awkward and ugly similes characteristic of noir fiction. I recently stopped reading a detective Chen mystery (A case of Two Cities by Qui Xiaolong) after about 30 pages because from time to time blossomed in my path a simile resembling one of those giant Indonesian flowers that look and smell like rotting flesh to attract flies. And Death in LA Fenice makes some effort at in-depth characterization, unlike say, Agatha Christie, where characterization is like the molding of inexpensive chess pieces – only sufficient to differentiate how they move in the game. It even is in a sense about the character of the victim, but I never felt any of the characters was fully human, had any of the fitful unexpected texture of real people. And the writing is okay, easy to follow, never awkward, but flat. I never said to myself, 'Wow that's a lovely paragraph, or sentence.’ It is set in Venice and the detective walks around Venetian neighborhoods and rides the vaporetto a lot. I have been to Venice several times as a tourist, and it rang true, but it never rang out. It was like a map rather than an aerial view. Geof Dyer's 's Jeff in Venice and Death in Varanasi, not a good book in my view, never the less makes Venice much more alive and interesting. The plot is the process of the detective solving the crime, a process of discovery, like Lambert Strether's discovery of what is going on with Chad Newsome in James’ The Ambassadors, or the process of discovery so popular in family secrete novels these days. An intriguing kind of plot, but the processes of his mind never intrigued me.I recall picking up a copy of the newsletter of the Canadian science fiction writers association at a friend’s house that included an article addressed the issue of whether people who actually tried to write well should be allowed to remain members of the association.Of course, there are exceptions, Raymond Chandler, some Dashiell Hammett, some Ursula K. Le Guin, and Nabokov’s fine science fiction novel Ada, for example.
—Dirk
This appeared on my shared Kindle and I was so pleased--I wanted to read it because of the opera connection and was happy to learn (after I read it) that it was the first in the series. This explains the introduction of Brunetti and his family, his way of working as a police commissioner (detective), his comrades, and Venice itself as a major part of the story. I've been to Venice only once, in 1968, and it makes me sad to think how much it's changed since then! I hope to read more of these--but there are a lot! I was astonished to learn that the author, Donna Leon, taught at the University of Maryland University College Europe (Vicenza) from 1981 to 1999, so her time overlapped my time working for the University of Maryland Munich Campus, also a part of UMUC Europe!
—Ivis Bohlen
