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Admirers of these books need no recommendation: they have been amazingly consistent in their development over the years, and have rarely slipped into the overfamiliar-there's no sense that Donna Leon is tired of either Brunetti or his battles with municipal and governmental corruption. It's spring in Venice, and Commissario Brunetti and his associate Vianello undertake a task not officially sanctioned by the Questura-they will try to do what they can for Vianello?s friend Marco, an eco-activist who has been arrested after an environmental protest turns ugly. Soon after, Brunetti witnesses the almost psychotic enmity of Marco's father-in-law, who almost seems prepared to murder his relative (a fear that Marco's wife shares). The old man's glass factory on Murano, the source of the conflict between father and son-in-law, becomes the scene for a murder: in front of the furnaces which eternally burn at high temperatures, a body is found and Brunetti?s search for the killer is aided by clues found in a volume of Dante. All of the customary Leon fingerprints are satisfyingly in place here: the sultry and immensely vivid evocation of Venice; the ever-present pall of evil and corruption that suffuses the beauty of the city, and (most pleasurably of all) the careful delineation of character in Brunetti and his associates. This is a series that has a long time to run yet. -Barry Forshaw |
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