Review: 'Unto Us a Son is Given'

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews

Unto Us a Son is Given
By Donna Leon
Crime fiction
March 2019
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0802129116

Donna Leon continues to explore ambiguity in human emotions and how situations develop into life-changing decisions in her latest Brunetti novel. This time, the exploration centers on family ties, including new ones and those that last throughout the years.

Unto Us a Son is Given centers on the concern Brunetti's father-in-law, Count Falier, has for one of his oldest friends. Gonzalo Rodriguez de Tejada is a long-retired art world mover and shaker who no longer has that world's respect. But he does have a much younger man in his life and wants to adopt this man to be his son. That would mean inheriting his still considerable estate. The count and others are aghast at his plan. Brunetti is more in the live-and-let-live camp, and doesn't understand the fuss. But he will do a little looking into the young man's bona fides to ease his father-in-law's concerns.

But that's not how the world works. Before much is discovered, Gonzalo suddenly drops dead on the street while away from home. As his older friends gather for a memorial service to honor his friend, someone else dies. This time, it's murder.

As is usual when visiting Brunetti, the ruminations and philosophy are draws. This time, the good commissario ponders prejudices acknowledged and unconscious. How do any of them feel about each other if there is a label attached? And if the prejudicial beliefs were true, how deep would they go? How far would they extend? What about criminals in general? Are they born this way? Because this is Brunetti, he makes connections between these lines of thought and Calvinists and Greek tragedies he is now reading again for the first time in years.

Is there predestination? Do the gods dictate someone's journey? And how does revenge, or justice, tie into all of this?

Heady ideas, but ones that are tied to the deaths in this book, the 28th Brunetti novel. As Guido himself notes in this book, how can a writer make something horrific not, well, beautiful, but rather powerful? That's what Leon does here. Families, love and how we feel underlie this whodunit.

©2019 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Reviews and reprinted by permission

Review: 'The Temptation of Forgiveness'

The Temptation of Forgiveness
By Donna Leon
Crime fiction
March 2018
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0802127754

The lens through which one views something can be affected by many factors -- including one's experience, who one trusts, where one was born and grew up, one's gender. Each of these lenses plays a role in The Temptation of Forgiveness, in which Guido Brunetti has to grapple with decisions that greatly affect the lives of others.

Brunetti's extremely talented colleague, Signora Elettra, is troubled by internal reports of leaks. Usually unflappable, she is bothered by the talk and, unusually for her, the ongoing office politics. At the same time, a colleague of Brunetti's wife comes to see him. Reluctantly, she admits she is worried about her teenage son. She has decided he is using drugs and the police should do something about it.

Then a man is found in the night near a bridge with a horrendous head wound. His recovery is doubtful. Brunetti realizes the victim is the husband of his wife's fellow professor.

Was the attack on him related to his wife's concerns for their son? With no other apparent motives, and a wife who isn't forthcoming with information, Brunetti sets out to see what he can discover.

Leon uses these events, and what would appear to be a logical progression in a police investigation, to delve into far more subtle affairs. Claudia Griffoni, Brunetti's esteemed fellow officer, is from Naples and sees things from a different angle than her two male Venetian colleagues. Brunetti and Griffoni come close to arguing about another case. They don't agree about a Muslim father who killed his daughter when he thought she had been carrying on with boys, and who now says he wants to die after discovering he was wrong. Without making a judgment call as the author, Leon instead shows all the different ways the two officers look at the situation.

This idea of different perspectives extend to both Brunetti's home, where he is re-reading Antigone, and to the case at hand. The classic play has Brunetti wondering if the lead character is right or wrong -- it depends on whether one views the king's decree as absolute or whether honoring family matters most.

When Brunetti, Griffoni and their colleague Vianello put their heads together, some will jump to conclusions. Some will think they are using logic when they are only able to view the situation in one way. In the end, Brunetti will find his way to a solution, but whether he makes the right decisions at the end could be questioned. It all depends on what lens one uses to view the situation.

This is a rich, nuanced and deeply engaging story. Donna Leon continues to present a beloved city, even if the lenses are not rose-colored, and characters who continue to surprise even long-time readers.


©2018 All Rights Reserved TheLitForum.com Review and posted with permission

Sunday Sentence: Donna Leon

As inspired by Fobbit and Brave Deeds author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, the best sentence(s) I read this week, presented without further context or commentary:

Grief lies inside us like a land mine: heavy footsteps will pass it by safely, while others, even those as light as air, will cause it to explode.

-- Donna Leon, Earthly Remains

Review: 'The Waters of Eternal Youth'

The Waters of Eternal Youth (a Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery)
By Donna Leon
Crime fiction
March 2016
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0802124807

Past, present and future, family and strangers all play roles in Donna Leon's latest Commissario Guido Brunetti novel, The Waters of Eternal Youth, working together for a subtly enriching, always engaging reading experience.

Brunetti is roped along with his wife to a formal dinner for a Venetian preservation charity dear to the heart of a friend of her family. The aristocratic patroness commands his presence for a later interview. She is old and there is something from the past she wishes to have settled. Many years ago, a beautiful teenage girl -- a Venetian afraid of the water -- fell into a canal one night. She was starting to drown but was saved by a passerby. The man who saved her, an alcoholic, thinks she was pushed but can remember nothing specific. Who he was is unclear. The girl was the aristocrat's granddaughter, and she has been trapped in a child's mind ever since. Before the grandmother dies, she wants to know the truth.

What can Brunetti find out? Was a crime committed? Is there any way to go back 15 years to find out? If so, is there any way to bring anyone responsible to justice?

Reluctantly drawn to the older woman's story, Brunetti will see what he can find out. This includes seeing what the ever-resourceful Elettra can find out. This most remarkable woman is on a quest of her own regarding electronic goings-on. Brunetti also enlists the aid of another policewoman with previously unknown skills of her own, Griffoni, who plays a key role in moving things along.

At the same time, Brunetti is disturbed to discover new refugees are starting to bother the girls outside school, including his daughter. They're far too aggressive for his taste. It's a small part of the story that echoes when, for example, during one of Brunetti's classic musings, he notes why other people's prejudices sound far more worse than our own. And the realization disturbs him. He and Paola have serious discussions, there is serious cooking, the children are nearly grown and definitely their own people, and, as ever, Venice is an integral part of each character and the story itself.

The kind of a person someone is, despite status, career or goals reached, is part of the characteristic climax of the novel. Donna Leon excels at carving out small, significant moments of grace and dignity in addition to a clear-eyed look at political and personal corruption and other failings.

The Waters of Eternal Youth, as Brunetti looks into what happened to a teenage girl years ago, uses those small moments to create an enormously satisfying ending. And because it's Donna Leon, the ending is handled just right. What a marvelous book.


©2016 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Review and reprinted with permission

Review: 'By Its Cover'

By Its Cover
By Donna Leon
Crime fiction
April  2014
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0802122643

Donna Leon's love of books and literature has shone in her Inspector Brunetti mysteries, especially through the character of Brunetti's wife, Paola.  In By Its Cover, books as objects are at the heart of the story's mystery.

Because this is a Brunetti story, in which differences matter, a distinction is made between books as art objects and the text contained on the pages of those objects. For rich collectors, the objects have more value. For the Brunettis, who live a book-strewn life in which volumes are left open and upside down, snuggled into cushions of furniture and perhaps even dog-eared, books are far more valuable for what they contain than for their appearance. And because this is a Brunetti story, perhaps this is a way to view people as well.

Brunetti is called to a Venetian scholarly library where old and revered volumes reside. Someone has been cutting out specific pages that are highly valued by collectors, while other rare and costly volumes are missing.

Suspicion immediately falls on a visiting American scholar, whose credentials soon prove to be false. Brunetti would like to speak with another man who spends many hours in the library -- a former priest who reads the works of older religious figures.

Adding to Brunetti's knowledge of this world are a library employee who helps retrieve books, the elegant library director and the woman whose generous donations form part of the damaged and stolen bounty. The benefactress is known to Paola's patrician parents, as is her wastrel stepson. But because she is not Venetian, she is not as valued by the small group that makes up the highest rung of Venetian society.

Donna Leon's compact story delves into the mystery of the underground market of rare books. But By Its Cover also touches on the idea of judging people by their covers, by their outside appearances and background. And because this novel is written by Donna Leon, that touch is light yet incisive.

By Its Cover is a shining example of how an author can keep a long-running crime fiction series fresh, relevant and highly entertaining.

©2014 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Beastly Things'

BEASTLY THINGS
By Donna Leon
Crime fiction (Commissario Guido Brunetti)
April 2012
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2023-6
                                                                                                                                           

The body of a man without identification but with a distinct medical condition is found in a canal. As Commissario Guido Brunetti discovers who the man was, and why he was killed, the well-loved Venetian policeman will have to address personal and professional issues.

Because the man has a condition that makes him stand out, Brunetti is able to identify him. The man was a veterinarian, separated from his wife and beloved son, and moonlighting at a slaughterhouse for financial reasons. So in addition to exploring other investigative avenues, Brunetti must talk to the people at the slaughterhouse. This comes as talk around home centers on unsafe food.

In a remarkable setpiece, Leon describes the tour Brunetti and Vianello take through the slaughterhouse after hours. It is gruesome but not graphic, and a master class in how to write about something utterly horrible without using extremely specific sights and actions.

The mystery of who killed the victim and why does not make a difficult case. But that is not the point of Leon's book. Nor is the point the theme so similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.

Rather, it is widespread and so often accepted corruption in personal and private lives that forms the foundation to Beastly Things. Whether it's Brunetti relying on the highly capable Signorina Elettra to discover information he needs or the business of any business -- to make money -- there is little innocence in his world.

Beastly Things is yet another deceptively thoughtful mystery from Leon, who once again also brings to vivid life Brunetti's Venice and the commissario's wonderful family.

©2012 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Books Reviews and reprinted with permission

Review: 'Drawing Conclusions'

DRAWING CONCLUSIONS
By Donna Leon
April 2011
Crime fiction
Atlantic Monthly Press
ISBN: 978-0802119797

Commissario Guido Brunetti has seen many kinds of crimes in his long career, giving him a deep knowledge of human behavior which he can use to ascertain guilt or innocence. But in Drawing Conclusions, the 20th Brunetti novel by Donna Leon, the Venetian copper will be surprised by the people he meets and impressed by his colleagues.

The story begins with translator Anna Maria Giusti arriving home early from a weekend with her boyfriend and his closed family. She discovers the body of a neighbor. Signora Altavilla, a quiet, dignified older woman, died of a heart attack. But there is a bit of blood and a radiator nearby. Did she hit her head on the radiator? Or was she pushed into it? Are those bruises on her? What at first looked straightforward may be more complicated.