One of the things I most look forward to each year is the arrival of a new Brunetti mystery. Generally every spring Donna Leon publishes another one and I am soon immersed in the world of Guido Brunetti, his family, and the Venice Questura.
A Guido Brunetti novel from Donna Leon is the literary equivalent of comfort food. They are familiar, reassuring, utterly reliable and always welcome.
Brunetti is one of my favourite characters in any books I read. This is a man who loves his family, sees the nuances in his challenging job as Commissario in Venice, questions authority when it is for a moral good, cares about society . . . the down trodden, reads the classics, appreciates art, architecture, food, and wine. While related to wealth, he seems more at home with the everyman. Likely it is this strength which allows him to feel empathy with many of the characters he comes in contact with - be they victim or villain.
Brunetti's world is one nuanced in grey.
The reader is the better for it.
One of the things I admire most about Leon is her command of language - her words dance on the page. These are very well-written mysteries. It is not by chance that language is the focus of The Golden Egg.
Language haunts Brunetti when he looks into the death of Davide Cavanella, the deaf and mentally disabled man who worked for his neighborhood dry cleaner. It strikes Brunetti as sad, as well as sinister, that he’s unable to find any public record of Davide, that his mother can’t produce her son’s birth or baptismal certificates, school documents or any other verification of his life. In the eyes of the state, Davide never existed. Even though it does not appear on first blush that a crime has been committed Brunetti is unable to let Davide's death go unexamined.
An articulate man who delights in the lively conversations he shares with his wife and two children, Brunetti is haunted by the silent world Davide inhabited. This thoughtful policeman is also led to brood over the debasement of language by the politicians and bureaucrats who cynically confuse, misdirect and misinform the public.
Seasoned mystery readers will expect murder to emerge from Guido's investigations. Be assured that Donna Leon's skilled and evocative tale does involve crime -- but you'll have to wait for it with Guido, as he pushes backward through the story of the young man he'd barely noticed before death.
Leon continues to be one of my favorites because she is never formulaic – she has ISSUES, and she uses her Brunetti novels to educate her readers. As we become educated, we continue to experience Venice through all the senses, the smell of the veal cooking for dinner, the taste of the tiny espressos in the corner cafe, the gruesome murder sites, the churches redolent with art, the sound of the waves in the canals, whipped up by the prevailing winds . . .you read Donna Leon, you become Venetian.
What a very thoughtful review! You so eloquently describe many of the reasons I love reading Donna Leon's Brunetti mysteries.
Posted by: Sharon J | April 29, 2013 at 01:58 AM
Thanks Sharon. If only they came out more often. :-(
Posted by: JDeQ | May 04, 2013 at 06:57 AM