I'm, as usual, exactly 30 years late to the party, but let me just be one of the most recent to tell you about Donna Leon and her lovely series of detective novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police.
The first in the (wow! 31!) novels in the series is Death at La Fenice.
As the first novel, it spends a certain amount of time helping us get to know the major characters, including Brunetti, his wife Paola, and his various other colleagues on the Venice Police.
Death at La Fenice is a lovely detective novel by itself: never rushed, never forced, never awkward or clumsy. Leon's tale proceeds through both time and space as Brunetti's investigation leads him to explore how events in wartime Germany continue to affect Italy today.
As so many other reviewers have remarked, the best part of Leon's books is how Venice comes alive. Leon, an American writer, talks of the city with a tenderness and respect borne of her own many years living there, and lets us see Venice through her eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment