By Bill Hill, Grand Rapids Public Library
Your plans for a trip to Italy fell apart? Until you can visit Rome or glide through Venice’s canals, do this: Take up with a policeman.
Donna Leon, an American living in Italy, has just brought out the 15th book, Through a Glass Darkly, in her mystery series set in Venice. Commissario Guido Brunetti is patient, principled and long suffering in the pursuit of justice in a bureaucracy often corrupt. He is married to Paola, who cooks wonderful meals and provides shrewd commentary. You finish a book feeling you’ve had a privileged homestay and seen sites for from the tourist track.
It’s best to begin the series with the first book, Death at La Fenice, since the author often refers to earlier incidents. Here, in the celebrated opera house, the world-famous conductor Maestro Helmut Wellauer, is poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. Brunetti, accustomed to the mazey corruptions of Venice, is surprised at the number of enemies Wellauer has made on his way to the top. That title is followed by Death in a Strange Country, in which the body of an American soldier is found in a canal. Next in the series is Uniform Justice, in which a cadet from Venice’s elite military academy is found hanged. The investigation leads to a wall of silence and hostility.
The series is very popular throughout Europe and is gathering lots of fans in the U.S., many of whom also couldn’t vacation in Venice this year.
