A Life, Lived

Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows - Part 2

It was 4 years ago that my copy of the last Harry Potter book arrived at the door -  at the time I struggled with reading it. Not because it was bad but because I didn't want it to end. Turning the last page meant saying goodbye to characters and plots that had entertained me for years.

I felt the same about going to see this movie.

We had the pleasure of viewing it in an adult-only theatre so I did not have to endure young children crying at the scary bits, tittering away over kissing (happily the excess of teen hormones seen in earlier installments was under wraps to some extent in this film), or loudly pointing out where the film moved away from the books (there was an excess of this too). Thank goodness because my head might have exploded.

I find it hard to believe that it has been some 11 long years since the Harry Potter series first graced the big screen, and while the hardcore fans are still just as dedicated as ever, it’s hard to say that the same level of magic and wonder remains for the movie going public. The kids that were in awe when the series first debuted are now experiencing the joys of adulthood and are likely less entranced than they once were. That being said, we thought this was an excellent film and in some respects one of those rare movies that ends up better than the book which inspired it.

With nothing left to tell, the grand finale to the Harry Potter saga holds nothing back. everyone knows the story. Everyone knows how it will turn out. Yet the film manages to pack some happy surprises for the audience.

After the return of Voldermort (Ralph Fiennes) and the wizarding and human worlds both in chaos, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) regroups with his closest friends to learn the missing information he needs to defeat Lord Voldemort once and for all. Part 1 of the cheap ploy by Warner brothers to squeezes the last bit of riches from this series was long (and a bit dull I thought with Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermoine (Emma Watson) searching for Horcruxes which would allow them to destroy Voldermort.

Part 2 starts with three horcruxes still left to destroy, Hermione and Ronfollow Harry into the vaults of Gringot’s and back to Hogwarts itself to find the ones still missing. When the last truth is finally revealed about the night James and Lilly Potter were killed, Harry discovers that there is still one more thing that must be destroyed to make Voldemort truly vulnerable and seal his fate. This final movie is really a two hour epic battle between good and evil that will have you on the edge of your seats waiting to see what comes next.

The principal players have become one with their parts (having grown up on camera from children to adults - also beautiful shown throug a series of flashbacks). Everyone has 'their' moment on the screen in this last movie, whether in flashback or ghostly visitation. There are plenty of golden character moments . . . Neville Longbottom (Matthew Lewis) coming into his own, Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham Carter) receiving her long-deserved comeuppance (lord, how I wanted to cheer!), and Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith) revealing a side of herself that we always suspected might be under that tightly controlled bun. Even villains like Severus Snape (Alan Rickman) and the Malfoys clan enjoy their character moments, and for whatever you think of them, something very humane still lingered in these characters -  something that people suspected might have been there for years in spite of evidence to the contrary.

The fact that the movie had the biggest opening weekend box office in motion picture history isn’t really an indication of whether or not it is worth seeing, but it certainly is a clear marker of the anticipation surrounding its release. As much as Part I was somewhat unsatisfying, this is completely satisfying and a fitting end to the franchise.

Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon

It's been 20 years since the first book in this series appeared. A conductor was poisoned and the Questura sent Commissario Guido Brunetti to investigate. Since 1992’s Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon and her compassionate and brilliant investigator have been fascinatingn readers. 

 Leon’s novels open a window into what could well be the private Venice of her citizens (those that remain, not yet having been run out by the tourists), a world of tarnished beauty, family intimacy, shocking crime, and ever-present corruption.

I was happy as a clam to find that the 'Easter bunny' had brought me Brunetti's latest adventures in my Easter basket. It didn't take me long to crack the cover and spend sometime with Brunetti, his loving family, the gang at the Questra, and the faded Pearl of the Adriatic.

Late one night, Brunetti is called away from dinner to investigate the death of a widow in her modest apartment. Though there are some signs of a struggle, the medical examiner rules that she died of a heart attack. It seems there is nothing for Brunetti to investigate. But he can’t shake the feeling that something or someone may have triggered her heart attack, that perhaps the woman was threatened. Conversations with the woman’s son, her upstairs neighbor, and the nun in charge of the old-age home where she volunteered, do little to satisfy Brunetti’s nagging curiosity. With the help of Inspector Vianello and the ever-resourceful Signorina Elettra, Brunetti delves deeper into this mystery.

In this book, there is one apparent crime but two strands that lead to it.  Leon again societal problems throughout the tale.  It turns out that the murdered woman had been thumbing her nose at those folks who live on the fringes . . . those who abuse women and those who take advantage of the elderly.  It is these threads that pierce Brunett's innate compassion.

When one of the strands leads back to events that occurred many years before, Brunetti has to make a challenging decisions for one who has been trained to respect the law. In the end the decision he makes is in keeping with the Commissario we have come to hold in such high regard over the years.

Leon fills every page with details that can be spoilers.  As with all the Brunetti books, Drawing Conclusions moves very quickly.  Leon is one of those authors whose books cry out to be read in one sitting (although you'll want to ration the tale to enjoy spending time with venice and her people for as long as possible).  She does not provide pat endings but she provides endings that are true to her characters.  Brunetti is a rock.  He may be worn by storms but they never change the essence of the decent man that he is.

The BBC 100 Book 'Meme'

This list was recently making the rounds on facebook. You'll note that the meme refers to 100 books yet the list actually only has 98.

No doubt the missing two were censored. *smile*

Here's how it goes:

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold those books you've read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7.  Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8.  Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9.  His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10.  Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11.  Little Women - Louisa M Alcott 
12.  Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy 
24. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
25. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky 
26. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck 
27. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
28. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 
29. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 
30. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
31. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
32. Emma -Jane Austen
33. Persuasion - Jane Austen
34. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
35. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
36. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
37. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
38. Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne 
39. Animal Farm - George Orwell
40. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown 
41. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
42. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
43. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
44. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery 
45. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy 
46. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
47. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
48. Atonement - Ian McEwan
49. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
50. Dune - Frank Herbert
51. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
52. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen 
53. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth 
54. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
55. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
56. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley 
57. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon 
58. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
59. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
60. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
61. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
62. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebol
63. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 
64. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
65. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
66. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
67. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie 
68. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
69. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
70. Dracula - Bram Stoker
71. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
72. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
73. Ulysses - James Joyce
74. The Inferno - Dante
75. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
76. Germinal - Emile Zola
77. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
78. Possession - AS Byatt
79. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
80. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
81. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
82. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
83. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert 
84. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
85. Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
86. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
87. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
88. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
89. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
90. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery 
91. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks 
92. Watership Down - Richard Adams
93. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
94. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
95. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
96. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

How did you do?

Donna Leon - Willful Behavior

When we were at the Barnes and Nobles in Niagara Falls last week (there you go Deborah) I saw a sign in the mystery novel section for NEW BOOKS. Imagine my surprise when I noticed that here was a Donna Leon Commissario Brunetti mystery there. While not a new book, Willful Behavior was originally published in the UK in 2002, it has just been release in North American in August of 2010.

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.

It would be enough for the reader to have a well crafted novel set in fabled Venice. However, Leon is never content with that. In every book she presents hard realities of our world that challenge the readers assumptions and notions about right and wrong, good and evil. Willful Behavior is no different.

The murder of a young woman draws Commissario Brunetti into buried secrets dating hack to WWII. When one of his wife Paola's students comes to visit him, with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it, beyond being attracted and intrigued by the girl's intelligence and moral seriousness. But when she is found dead, Claudia Leonardo is suddenly no longer simply Paola's student, but Brunetti's case.

Claudia seems to have no discernible living family - her only familial relationship is with an elderly Austrian woman, who was the lover of her grandfather, but was not herself Claudia's grandmother. Brunetti is both intrigued and stunned by the extraordinary art collection the old woman keeps in her small, unprepossessing flat. When she in turn is found dead, the case seems to be about to open up long buried secrets of collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews during the war, secrets few in Italy are happy to explore.

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.

You'll love the transformation.

David Hewson's The Blue Demon

For Rome fear is not new. Few cities have had to cope with as much tumult, uncertainty, and intrigue throughout the pace of history as has Rome. The city has a decidedly resigned air about it, as if the citizens are saying 'do your worse, we've been there before, and we will prevail.'

In David Hewson's latest edition of the wonderfully gritty mysteries series featuring a band of police officers and their medical examiner sidekicks a different Rome is presented. This is a Rome that is coping with terror of a different scale - modern terror where one can't tell enemy from friend and where one's enemies seem to appear with sudden, shocking force to strike fear into the hearts of mankind.

The leaders of the G8 are descending upon Rome to meet at the venerable Quirnale Palace. This visit takes on a different light when an assault on a government vehicle leads to the killing of one occupant and abduction of Ministry of Interior official Giovanni Batisti. Soon the core of the city becomes a ghost town as security forces try to keep the world leaders safe inside a protective fence and the unnamed evil out.

Detective Nic Costa and the men and women of the Questura must work in secret to thwart a conspiracy that reaches higher than any of them could have imagined. While coming closer and closer to the truth Costa faces death yet at the same time comes closer to understanding his past then ever before. Such is the skill of Hewson that he can wave these often disparate stories together seamlessly.

To complicate matters even more Hewson brings to life a mysterious group called the Blue Demon that seemed to vanish 20 years ago having committed unspeakable acts of violence. The Blue Demon sect seems to be a perverted version of the Etruscans, whose hedonistic, life-affirming civilization was crushed by the Romans. Is the Blue Demon sending a message to modern society? Comparing us to the corruption of the failing Roman Empire?

As always, Hewson builds an elaborate plot, extending deep into ancient history but with intriguing and realistic connections to modern situations.  Will Costa and his determined band of ruggedly individual, anti-authoritarian colleagues be able to equal the equation? Will they be able to discern the smoke and mirrors to uncover the truth behind the Blue Demon and the ritualistic murders?

It was an interesting twist that this book was published on the eve of my trip to Italy . . . while Hewson described Rome in fear I was able to wander a Rome still swarming with tourists. When our trusty band of officers enjoyed a quiet dinner in the ghetto I was doing the same on a quiet piazza. I walked past the Quirnale Palace and thought of Costa, Falcone, and Peroni within. Hewson brings Rome to life in all of its gritty, wonderous glory.

Then I returned home to Toronto on the eve of the G8/G20 visit. Police officers are posted on street corners. Barricades are going up around the central core. Citizens are being told to stay home. Colleagues are fearful for their safety (and having to pay me $ 50 every time they mention the G8/G20 in fear - soon I shall have a return ticket to Rome). Every effort (a billion dollars worth of effort actually) is going into protecting the leaders and keeping those who wish to harm them out.

I'll save my political rants about a world when the citizens are unable to voice their displeasure with government for a different day. Be assured that it is coming.

Hewson has established himself as one of my favourite authors for his ability to breath life and passion into the mundane. The stories are gritty and hard to read at times yet a spark of humanity, of good, always resides somewhere deep within the blackness of the prose. The characters are not one-dimensional, rather they seem as real as your neighbours, as full of human frailties yet promise as the rest of us.

I won't disclose much more of the plot except to say that this book doesn't have the 'typical' Hewson ending. Clearly we are left hanging . . . a sequel is in the works and one is left in suspense. Will good triumph over evil? Do I have to wait another year to find out? ARGH

David Hewson - the Cemetry of Secrets

It is no secret to anyone who has read this blog for a spell that I love a good mystery - although my strategy for reading them is a tad odd. There are few things that make me happier than sitting down with a well written book that has a huge puzzler as the main plot device. Throw in some well crafted characters and a wonderful setting and I am hooked from beginning to end.

A few years ago someone on the slow travel website suggested that I might enjoy reading the mystery series by David Hewson. His series of modern crime stories featuring an ensemble of police officers in Rome, led by the young detective Nic Costa, began with A Season for the Dead, and has now been contracted to run to at least nine installments by British, American, European and Asian publishers. His mysteries expose the grittier side of life in Italy which I enjoy. Imagine my surprise when I was in the book store and I found a recently published novel by Hewson - The Cemetry of Secrets.

Previously published in 2001 as Lucifer's Shadow this novel does not feature the wonderful band of police officers and lab technicians that I have come to enjoy in a Hewson story. Here you have different characters who are all well-developed. As well, this is not the tourist Venice of San Marco and the Rialto. The book features the seamier side of life in Venice - arched throught a period of 200 years.

Now, to be fair, Venice is awash with fictional detectives. It's the birthplace and spiritual home of Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen as well as Donna Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti. It's an easy market to enter – Venice has so much to offer the aspiring novelist with its historic city and dubious politics – but a difficult one to conquer. This mystery is unique in that there isn't really a detective racing about searching for clues - the reader becomes the detective and is left to pull the pieces from the two interwoven stories to figure out what is unfolding in Venice.

Hewson has Venice to perfection – the dying city which is being turned into a theme park to attract yet more of the tourists who are strangling the place. He has the murky politics too – the place where not being corrupt is quaint and rather strange and it's accepted that those who rise to the top are likely to be crooks, with the only worry being the advantages which might flow from this.

I really did enjoy this exciting story set in Venice and the descriptions (nicely descriptive but not too flowery or lengthy) really made me want to visit Venice again to see some of the places mentioned through moreopened eyes. The book cleverly jumps between two timelines, the 1700's and present day. The two stories are intertwined and mirror each other very interestingly.

I don't want to give too much of the plot away but will say that this is a good page turner, well written and has a hugely satisfying ending. Its not a ridiculously complicated plot but rather contains a natural suspense and sense of intrigue. I would definitely recommend it.

One thing that was intriguing to me was that as I read this book because the characters seemed so familiar to me. When I finished the book I decided to find my copy of the 'Lizard's Bite' and wouldn't you know it - many of the same characters feature in that story as well. In fact, one might suggest that 'the Cemetery of Secrets' serves as a prequel of sorts to the later story.

If you're like me and you love a well-crafted mystery (especially should it be set in beautiful but murky Venice) - you'll want to give this a read - regardless of whether or not you've read any of Hewson's other books (and if you haven't - what have you been waiting for?).

About Face by Donna Leon

Donna Leon has long been one of my favorite mystery authors. In her Commissario Guido Brunetti police procedurals, she captures the city of Venice, interweaving the social scene and internal politics. Her mysteries aren't action thrillers driven by events, rather they are well-crafted stories that are more character driven.

'Her' main character, the melancholic police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice. Each case in this 18 book series, is an opportunity for the author to reveal another aspect of the seamy underside of society. The fact that Brunetti can only go so far in attacking the endemic corruption of the system leaves him deeply cynical, although it does not prevent him from trying again and again.

Brunetti finds solace in the company of his wife, Paola, a hereditary contessa born to one of Venice's oldest families, as well as their growing children, Raffi and Chiara. Paola teaches English literature in the public university system and, despite her background, is very much to the left, still fueled by the spirit of 1968. The domestic warmth of the Brunetti family contrasts with corruption and cruelty that Brunetti encounters at work.

Venice's head of police, Vice-questore Patta, serves as the vain and self-serving buffo, while Sergente Vianello and the all-knowing and well-connected Signorina Elettra, Patta's secretary, assist Brunetti on the ground and through research.

I started reading the series in 2006 when I was planning a trip to Venice. When I finally got to Venice I was amazed at how accurately Leon brought the city to live; she didn't try and romanticize it - Venice was presented for the shining, corrupt, brilliant, fading jewel that it is. Yes, Leon captures the dichotomy.

Before Easter I and read that the latest Leon mystery was in print . . . and guess what the Easter Bunny delivered to my house and placed in MY Easter basket. Others can have their chocolate, I will take a Leon mystery any day.

This is how the mystery is described on the cover flap:

At a dinner party given by his parents-in-law, Comissario Brunetti meets Franca Marinello, the wife of a prosperous Venetian businessman. He's charmed - perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola - by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance.

A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabinieri Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse - and more sinister material - in his company's trucks.

No stranger to mutual suspicion and competition between rival Italian police departments, Brunetti is nevertheless puzzled by the younger man's paranoid behavior. Eventually Guarino agrees to email a photo of his suspect, but by the time the photograph arrives, he himself is dead. Was he killed because he got too close? And why is it that Franca Marinello has often been seen in company of the suspect, a vulgar man with Mafia connections and a violent past?

Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle, gripping and topical as ever, bringing the sights, sounds and smells of Venice flooding to life.  About Face has everything you'd want from a Donna Leon novel: enchanting descriptions of and on the city of Venice, the ever morally questionable picture of police work and politics, and the beautiful respite of the happy family life of Brunetti.

The two story lines that make up this solid Brunetti Italian police procedural sort of come together in a final confrontation, but the heart of the tale is the insightful look at the relationships of the hero especially with his cherished wife and children, the change in Brunetti's relationship with his aristocratic in-laws, and the unabashed respect from the cops who work for him.

The underlying theme here is that humans are turning the third planet from the sun into a toxic dump that needs action now. Fans will enjoy Donna Leon’s cautionary environmental whodunit that focuses on the garbage wars - very topical for anyone who has read Italian news over the past few years.

About Face is a superb entry in Leon's wonderful series. I enjoyed every page of it and the ease with which she writes. It is, I think,  one of herbest, and the ending should even satisfy those among her reader's who dislike her tendency to ambiguous, messy endings, as here you get the impression that, while it ends unclearly, everything important is revealed at the same time.

As long time visitors will know, I enjoy reading mysteries set in a location I have visited or will visit. Now, Grove Press has published Brunetti's Venice, Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective, by Toni Sepeda, with an introduction by Donna Leon. This was simultaneously published with About Face. Tourists and armchair travelers can follow in the footsteps of Brunetti as he traverses the city he knows and loves. There are over a dozen walks, encompassing all six regions of Venice as well as the lagoon. This is a must have companion book for any fan of Donna Leon's series.

I guess now I have to plan another trip to Venice to experience the joy of Brunetti's beloved city all over again!

Dante's Numbers by David Hewson

A few years ago someone on the slowtravel website suggested that I might enjoy reading the mystery series by David Hewson. His series of modern crime stories featuring an ensemble of police officers in Rome, led by the young detective Nic Costa, began with A Season for the Dead, and has now been contracted to run to at least nine installments by British, American, European and Asian publishers. His mysteries expose the grittier side of life in Italy which I enjoy.

The newest of David Hewson’s intelligent thrillers finds Rome detective Nic Costa guarding the death mask of Italian Renaissance poet Dante, on display for the opening of a film based on Dante’s Inferno. Life begins to imitate art, as a bizarre series of events drawn from Inferno and a masterpiece of Hollywood’s golden age leads to the death of the film’s star, and Nic travels to San Francisco to unravel the mystery.

In my mind Dante's Numbers is action-packed suspense at its most intelligent. By transplanting Nic Costa and his fellow Italian detectives into the dizzying world of Hitchock's 'Vertigo' in San Francisco the author is able to juxtapose the US and Italy. This makes for some fascinating plot and character developments.

The absence of clichéd police officers is to be highly commended. Although pathologist Teresa Lupo is a light-hearted character, she doesn't hang around making horrible jokes. All four of the main characters are thoroughly plausible human beings.

The novel is fast paced, although it does drag a bit when the Romans travel to the US in an attempt to solve the crime. Like all good mysteries there are clues as to what is going on but they're laced with enough twists and turns that make it difficult to solve the crime until the end.

I found Dante's Numbers to be a highly entertaining read!

Buckingham Palace Gardens - Review

Anne Perry is one of my favourite authors - she writes gripping mysteries about murder and mayhem in Victorian England. Her first novel was published in 1979 and I believe that I have read all 50 of her novels since then - yes, she is prolific. I was a bit disconcerted to google her while doing some background work for this post and discovered that she herself was a convicted murderer. Her crime, committed at the age of 15, was to murder her best friend's mother by bludgeoning her to death with a stone (45 times!).

At first I wasn't sure how that made me feel about her. Did her crime change anything for me? After some reflection I realize that it didn't. Clearly there was some horror in her youth, she went to prison for it and has reformed herself. The youth justice system is set up to recognize that children do not have the same judgment as adults. It isn't as if she is a mass murdered now. She made a horrific mistake, she paid for it, time to move on.

The 25th entry in my favourite long-running Thomas & Charlotte Pitt Victorian series starts out with what could be a mundane murder in Victorian England: a prostitute with her throat slashed in a linen cupboard. But this is no ordinary linen cupboard. This cupboard belongs to Her Majesty Queen Victoria. The prostitute's blood is found on sheets that are monogrammed with Her Majesty's name. To make matters worse, the only murder suspects are the hedonist HRH the Prince of Wales and his four wealthy and influential friends.

We are introduced to a group of 4 magnificent (in their own minds for sure) men who have a daring plan to build a railroad stretching from South Africa to Cairo. All they need is the Prince of Wales approval but that looks like it may be out of the question unless this sticky mystery is solved. Their wives are just as fascinating. Of course, each man and woman has a secret that must come out and when they do, it’s explosive.

Pitt moves into the Palace and brings the Pitt’s maid, Gracie, along for the ride. While Pitt questions and detects among the glittering upper classes, Gracie skulks around the cavernous “downstairs” ferreting out clues. Without her help Pitt would be lost. In this story Gracie takes on the roll of helpmate usually assigned to Charlotte. In fact, Charlotte only appears in one chapter. This left me somewhat flat because Charlotte has always been one of my favourite Perry characters.

Another departure for Perry is that there appears to be more byplay between the other characters outside of the interview process. Ms. Perry presents us with an offering more complex than others in the series with multiple plot twists. I enjoyed the book and recommend it with the caveat that it is a bit different from other Pitt Mysteries.

All in all, Buckingham Palace Gardens is a great summer read!

The City of Fallen Angels

The City of Falling Angels opens on the evening of January 29, 1996, when a dramatic fire destroys the historic Fenice opera house. The loss of the Fenice, where five of Verdi's operas premiered, is a catastrophe for Venetians. Arriving in Venice three days after the fire, John Berendt - famous for his book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - becomes a kind of detective-inquiring into the nature of life in this remarkable museum-city-while gradually revealing the truth about the fire.

In the course of his investigations, Berendt introduces us to a rich cast of characters: a prominent Venetian poet whose shocking "suicide" prompts his skeptical friends to pursue a murder suspect on their own; the first family of American expatriates that loses possession of the family palace after four generations of ownership; an organization of high-society, partygoing Americans who raise money to preserve the art and architecture of Venice, while quarreling in public among themselves, questioning one another's motives and drawing startled Venetians into the fray; a contemporary Venetian surrealist painter and outrageous provocateur; the master glassblower of Venice; and numerous others-stool pigeons, scapegoats, hustlers, sleepwalkers, believers in Martians, the Plant Man, the Rat Man, and Henry James.

by far the most important character int he book is the city herself. Venice, a city steeped in a thousand years of history, art and architecture, teeters in precarious balance between endurance and decay. Its architectural treasures crumble — foundations shift, marble ornaments fall — even as efforts to preserve them are underway. Venice is a city of masks and riddles, where narrow streets and passageways form a giant maze that confounds the uninitiated and deepens the sense of mystery

A few facts from this book about Venice that you may or may not know:

Venice has the cleanest air of any city because there are no cars and methane gas which burns cleanly is used for heating.

It is also the quietest city with a sound level of 32 decibels, while for the average city it is 45 decibels, again because of the absence of traffic.

There are 443 bridges in the city of Venice, although I have seen other figures bandied about, including 500.

During his occupation of Venice, Napoleon razed to the ground 176 religious buildings, 80 palaces along with their decorations and art treasures and his agents confiscated 12,000 paintings and sent them Paris where they now reside in the Louvre.

The Venetian Mafia control the water taxi business in Venice, along with the money lending operation in front of the Municipal Casino, which incidentally residents of Venice are not allowed to enter due to a very old statute still on the books.

The permanent population of Venice has now shrunk to 70,000 although an estimated 7 million tourists visit the city each year.

Well why don't you read the book for yourself? I do recommend it highly although the tone might be considered a trifle gossipy, however I found it fascinating.

You may also be interested in the list of the ten books that John Berendt thinks are essential reading on Venice and I found this fascinating site which has a fairly exhaustive list of books on Venice, both fiction and non fiction.

I found this book to be a witty and urbane tour through the private (as opposed to the tourist) Venice. It also had a godssipy tone. Along with Berendt we encounter an extraordinary roster of Venetians and expatriates--the people who actually live in Venice. And what a collection of eccentrics and oddballs! I was hooked from the very beginning in which Berendt describes the spectacular fire that destroyed the Fenice opera house, as seen through the eyes of the people who were on the scene, including the 87-year-old master glassbower of Venice, who watched from his bedroom window a mere 30 feet away from the blaze and then went to his glassmaking factory and started work on a series of bowls and vases representing the awful fire.  Couldn't put it down. Didn't want it to end. I'm sure that this has nothing to do with the fact that I love Venice!