January 1, 2005
This installment in the re-launched international crime series has the Commissario delving into Venice's community of illegal immigrants, counterfeiting, and murder. CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction-winner Leon lives in Venice. A 50,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
Starred review from March 1, 2005
The appeal of Guido Brunetti, the hero of Donna Leon's long-running Venetian crime series, comes not from his shrewdness, though he is plenty shrewd, nor from his quick wit. It comes, instead, from his role as an everyman. He is trapped in an impenetrable bureaucracy; his bosses are either foolish or corrupt; he lacks the power to catch the bad guys or to bring about justice. He is a cop, but his workaday world feels much like yours and mine. So it is here, as he attempts to investigate the peculiar murder of an illegal immigrant, a " vu cumbra." The victim, a Senegalese street vendor, is shot, assassination style, as he peddles fake handbags to tourists. The murder brings out the latent racism of the locals, and as Brunetti attempts to come to terms with his own feelings about the immigrants, he realizes that the crime is only the tip of an iceberg that he will never be allowed to explore. He soldiers on, though, solving nothing, but doing good around the edges and making some sense of his feelings and those of his wife and children, also struggling with a new world in which the old assumptions no longer hold. Not so different from our own days at the office or nights around the dinner table. Crime fiction for those willing to grapple with, rather than escape, the uncertainties of daily life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)
Starred review from March 21, 2005
In this stunning novel, the 14th to feature the dogged, intuitive Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti (after 2004's Doctored Evidence
), Leon combines an engrossing, complex plot with an indictment of the corruption endemic to Italian society. The murder of an anonymous African street vendor, an inoffensive, possibly illegal Senegalese immigrant, explodes into a many-layered conundrum. Italian attitudes toward "Senegali" range from the bargain shoppers' approval of their harmless efforts to earn money selling knock-off accessories to legitimate merchants' outrage at competition from the cheaper goods. After Brunetti discovers uncut diamonds hidden in the victim's spartan room and evidence the room was searched, the Interior and Foreign Affairs Ministries take over the case and all of Brunetti's pertinent files, papers and computer disappear. Enraged, Brunetti sidesteps normal police procedures and taps into personal and professional sources, uncovering evidence linking the victim, the Angolan civil war, the Italian secret service and an industrial giant with government connections. Many of Leon's favorite characters appear, including the gourmand Brunetti's family, the obsequious Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and Patta's irreverent secretary, Signorina Elletra. They balance this dark, cynical tale of widespread secrecy, violence and corruption. Agent, Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland).
Starred review from April 1, 2005
When an illegal alien (or "vu cumpra") from Africa, who's selling fake designer handbags, is killed execution-style in a crowded Venice market, the case creates personal crises for Leon's endearing police Commissario Guido Brunetti ("Doctored Evidence") as well as international ramifications. For Brunetti, the firestorm starts when his daughter, Chiara, horrifies her mother, Paola, by saying it was "only a "vu cumpra"," leading to family discussions of race and class. Then warning flags appear for the commissario: his superior warns him to drop the case, Brunetti finds uncut diamonds among the victim's belongings, and the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs show undue interest. Brunetti persists, of course, following threads and calling upon the expertise of friends and relatives, to the point of possibly endangering persons close to him at home and at work. Despite the dispiriting and all-too-plausible ending, the evocative Venetian setting and the warmth and humanity of the Brunetti family add considerable pleasure to this nuanced, intelligent mystery; another winner from the Venice-based Leon. Highly recommended for all mystery collections. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ "1/05.] -Michele Leber, Arlington, VA
Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.