Death in a Strange Country,
Donna Leon
Synopsis
Early one morning, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti, the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something is discovered in the victim’s apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime.
Richard says
Donna Leon is an American who lived much of her adult life in Venice. She must have loved the city, but something has happened, and she no longer lives in Italy or Venice.
Leon may have gotten fed up with Italian bureaucracy and the red tape officialdom of Italian bureaucracy. She may have gotten fed up with the crime and corruption in Italy that she describes in many of her Brunetti series books. Or, she may have become ‘persona non grata’ because of her many exposes of the corrosion, corruption and chaos of Italy, its culture and its society.
Leon never pulled punches when she wrote about the sins of Italian bureaucracy, society and culture. Corruption and criminal corrosion probably are no deeper in Italy than in any other country in the world, but the way Leon often describes it, it is more than petty larceny in your pocket. It is ubiquitous organized crime, the Mafia that she writes, is prevalent everywhere in Italy, much more than petty larceny.
Sadly, the Mafia degeneration of Italy is inescapable, much like the gang and drug violence of Mexico. There, too, a beautiful country, wonderful people, and a magnificent tourist jewel has been kidnapped by the drug cartel. Italy is the same, a magnificent country whose glory has been stolen and is being ruined by criminal organizations.
Back to the book…Leon reveals the corruption and evils pervasive throughout Italy today as she writes her Brunetti series. She writes about tax fraud, environmental destruction, social erosion, and immigration prejudice, exposing the flaws of Italy, like skin rashes on a leper. She exposes and describes; she does not judge or criticize, leaving those actions up to the reader. But she incorporates Italy’s sinful side into her writing, and for that, she may have alienated the powers that be who pushed her out of the country she once loved so much.
Her Brunetti series [ He is a detective in Venice, a man of principles, ethical values and moral standards who never ceases to feel depressed with the Italian society’s corrosive and sinful elements. Leon writes excellent crime novels with the bonus that they are travelogues of Venice. Her descriptions of the calles and canales will take every reader on a tour of Venice, an adult’s Disneyworld of tourism and travel glory.
But she writes good stories, too. And every book is a good story, readable and enjoyable, with the biggest bonus that she takes readers on a tour of Venice. A reader almost feels as if they are in a gondola gliding through a city canal.
Excellent stories, wonderful tours of Venice. Read her…Death in a Strange Country delivers a classic Leon Brunetti story.
