So Shall You Reap

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Si buscáis acción trepidante o una investigación policial al uso, no lo vais a encontrar aquí. Esta no es una historia para devorar, si no para saborear lentamente (como si de uno de los deliciosos platos preparados por Paola se tratase): sus palabras, sus cafés, sus calles. Venecia y Brunetti, una vez más, no decepcionan. Donna Leon guides us through Venice like James Ellroy through Los Angeles or Manuel Vázquez Montalbán through Barcelona: with an eye used to detect what lies behind the façade.” — Le Figaro (Paris) In this volume, as in all the other volumes in this excellent series, I learned something more about Venetian culture and what it is to live in Venice. Brunetti's pace had slowed as he thought about the similarity between this disease and Elisabetta's story. Get told what seems a simple event, and soon it's expanding out of control; understand the basic facts, until a new variant appears. Believe you've found the source, only to stumble upon new information that changes everything. Conclusions vanish, explanations fail. Stop being attentive, and the next day there are new victims. Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini's son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he's involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend's daughter's place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors--that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello, and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

While I can understand why Leon preferred to write about a mostly post pandemic time, I think she missed out on a golden opportunity. As I mentioned in my review of last year's book, I really wanted to know how these characters were managing during the pandemic, and a Brunetti book about 2020 in Venice could have been really fantastic. Leon has written a good deal in recent years about how Venice has been drowning literally and figuratively due to tourists and climate change, and seeing Venice during this period would have been a wonderful contrast.Donna Leon depicts the characters, food, culture, and people of Venice with a knowing eye for ‘just the right’ detail.” —Jennifer McCord, Bookreporter.com Guido is given very little to go on, only that Fenzo told Flora that they could be in danger. Feeling that he owes loyalty to Elisabetta's mother, who had been kind to him, he agrees to help and that there will be no police records kept. The smart close knit police team hone in Fenzo's accountancy business, thinking that it's good place to start, looking at his clients, but they hear little but praise for him. They move onto a South American charity that Fenzo had helped Elisabetta's husband set up, the Belize nel Cuore, providing a hospital and medical services to the poor, a charity that was founded with a retired, ex-naval Vice-Admiral suffering from dementia. When Flora's veterinary clinic is vandalised and her dog hurt, the police are called to the scene, putting their team inquiries for the first time on a formal police footing.

I’ve been following Brunetti for over twenty years (this is book number 31) and whenever I sit down with the latest episode I feel that I’m reacquainting myself with a group of old friends: Guido, his wife Paola and their children and also Brunetti’s colleagues at the Questura. The crime itself – if you can actually identify one – is often inconsequential to my enjoyment of these books, what I most enjoy is the verbal jousting that takes place between the various players and the frequent tangential musings on art, food, literature and history, or simply on the overt bureaucracy that is an inescapable component of life in this country. If this makes the books sound somewhat muddled or confused then I can only assure you that they don’t read this way. Donna Leon y el Comisario Brunetti llevan acompañándome más de media vida. Después de más de veinte años, leer cada una de sus nuevas novelas se ha convertido en una especie de ritual en el que reencontrarme con viejos amigos para ponernos al día. Desde hace ya unas cuantas entregas (“Cosecharás tempestades” es la número 32), la serie dejó de interesarme por los crímenes en sí (que también), si no que lo hace por sus maravillosos personajes, que ya siento casi como si fuesen familia. Después del sabor agridulce que me dejó la anterior entrega, me alegra comprobar que en esta ocasión Donna Leon vuelve en plena forma. As always an insightful foray into Venetian life, the past, the various laws of inheritance, including titles, and of course food. To Guido's surprise, he recognises the murdered man, he had met him the previous day, the undocumented Sri Lankan, Inesh Kavinda, a peace loving Buddhist who did various job's for the Palazzo's owners, a Italian academic Professor Renato Molin and his wife, Gloria Forcolin, who he had met previously. There seems to be no motive for Kavinda's killing, accounts seem to bear out that he was a good man, although there are papers in his home that make no sense. They relate to Italy's turbulent political and violent history, with its kidnappings and disappearances, but why would the Sri Lankan man be interested in this? Guido follows a number of threads, aided by the able Signorina Elettra, who refines a method she learns of at a conference, along with Vianello and Commissario Claudia Griffoni.

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March is one of my favorite months because that is usually when Donna Leon’s latest Commissario Guido Brunetti book is published. I was fortunate enough to read an #ARC of 2023’s book. Like all of Leon's novels, it ultimately feels like a glorious invigorating holiday.' Daily Express I’ve been a big fan of the Guido Brunetti series and have made my way through the first 24 of them. Thanks to Netgalley, I’m jumping ahead to So Shall You Reap, # 32 in the series. It’s also the first of the series I’ve read, rather than listened to. It works just as well in either format. Donna Leon is the ideal author for people who vaguely long for a good mystery. That Leon is also a brilliant writer should only add to the consistently comforting appeal of her Venetian procedurals featuring Commissario Guido Brunneti. Leon allows her warmhearted detective to take what solace he can from the beauty of his city and the homely domestic rituals that give him the strength to go on.” —Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review