Donna Leon's Newest, TRACE ELEMENTS, Exploring Another Venice Mystery

[originally published at the New York Journal of Books]

“The plot and related risks are less dramatic than usual, and perhaps less memorable, but in the long run, this is a book rich with questions of honor and trust, offered from the hand of a master storyteller.”

It’s tempting to itemize the many pleasures of a Donna Leon mystery: reconnecting with Commissario Guido Brunetti, who is both kind and clever and often becomes appropriately infuriated with the injustice and malice his job exposes him to; exploring Venice through his gaze, which is the gaze of a lover who barely notices the latest attire but instead revels in the scent of the body, the shared history, the upcoming meals together; and tiptoeing behind Brunetti in order to slide, unnoticed, into his Venetian family’s home, where amazing culinary delights appear routinely, teenaged children become wise, and forgiveness and intelligence are equally prized.

And then there are the plots – each of which reveals, in layers, the deeply prized (and sometimes fragile or misled) culture of Venice and its surroundings.

In Trace Elements, Leon opens with a dying patient at a hospice care facility, who’s requested a chance to speak to the police. When Brunetti and his not-yet-seasoned colleague Claudia Griffoni respond, they find Benedetta Toso too ill to give a coherent report. But her husband, recently dead on a motorbike ride that ended in a canal, is clearly on the woman’s mind, and what she is able to say is disturbing: “It was bad money. I told him no,” the patient says clearly, in her first lucid moment of the visit, followed a few minutes later by “They killed him.” And that’s about all she can convey before collapsing.

Struck deeply by the woman’s suffering, Brunetti and Griffoni commit themselves to tracking down what must, at least to the dying signora, have been a serious crime, perhaps murder.

Fans of the series will be enchanted by the adroit research that the police department’s administrative “assistant” (everyone knows she’s far more than that), Signora Elletra, provides as Brunetti pulls apart the strands of what the dead man had investigated, and his role in possibly hiding or altering data at a water testing lab. Of course, Brunetti’s boss, Patta, gets in the way, and the Commissario’s wife Paola provides sensible commentary. Most poignant, though, are the small interludes of conversation between the investigators and the people they care about or care for.

For instance, Brunetti’s daughter Chiara challenges her father about one of his old friends whom she calls “Zio Giulio”: “Is he in the Mafia?” the teen asks bluntly. As Brunetti struggles to put this into context, he gropes: “His father was. … So that’s what the Mafia is like. If you’re born where it is, your thermostat adapts to it. Not everyone’s, but lots of people’s.” Chiara wants a more definite answer, and Brunetti is stranded among all the details and history that tint the picture for him: “How to tell her about Giulio and his connections, his law practice and the clients he defended, the things he could make happen with a phone call?”

This interlude in fact is prelude to the kinds of moral choices Brunetti and Griffoni must repeatedly struggle with, as they discover who in the water pollution testing world is committing crimes, at what level, and who can be held responsible – in fact, how they may need to assist Justice in balancing the scales, strictly legal or not.

Leon’s ability to paint both her city of Venice and the quandaries of commitment make this Trace Elements a quietly powerful book. The plot and related risks are less dramatic than usual, and perhaps less memorable, but in the long run, this is a book rich with questions of honor and trust, offered from the hand of a master storyteller. 

[More Donna Leon mystery book reviews here. And there's a great interview with Donna Leon here.]

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.    

Crime Fiction in Venice, from Christine Evelyn Volker, VENETIAN BLOOD

You love the Venice crime fiction from Donna Leon? I do. Not only do her books carefully compose clues, stresses, red herrings, and police procedure (plus Italian and Venetian culture and cuisine), but the interactions among the characters -- especially Commissario Guido Brunetti and his family -- deepen the books and their impact. I often pre-order my copies of each new title.

That said, there's generally just one new Donna Leon per year. So to get an extra dash of Venice, one may indulge in less skilled authors who still have a good mystery to offer. And that's the case for Christine Evelyn Volker, whose VENETIAN BLOOD is released in August from She Writes Press.

Volker's mystery shows the signs of an early-career author, especially in the first few chapters. But it gets better, and I enjoyed the final twists, which involve financial dirty dealings and affaires of the heart and body. Plus, the book helped meet that Venice appetite. But don't count on cuisine, or depth of relationships -- Volker's catalyst for relationships tends to be romantic attraction, versus the lines of faith, loyalty, and compassion that Leon lays out so strongly.

Also, for a collector, there are some questions about books from She Writes Press, which occupies the murky middle ground between standard publishers and what used to be called vanity presses. The press president, Brooke Warner, is a regular writer for Huffington Post; see her explanation there, of her press's new arrangement, where established authors mentor new ones, included in the fee. 

In the case of VENETIAN BLOOD were Nina Schuyler and David Corbett. Yes, that's enough to make me sit up and notice.

So should you collect this and/or, more pertinently, pick up a copy to read? My opinion: Yes, if you specifically collect Italian crime fiction. No, if you're going to measure the book against Donna Leon and others at the top of the field. Hope that's enough to help you make a decision. I ended up pleased with the book's plot by the end, but it was rough to get to the middle.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.

Crime Fiction, Venice, the Commissario -- Yes, Donna Leon

Donna Leon's 2013 crime novel THE GOLDEN EGG features Commissario Guido Brunetti and takes us again to the canals and back streets of Venice -- a multilayered city whose layout is so complicated that even this life resident and seasoned police detective reaches again and again for his copy of the guidebook Calli, Campielli e Canali. Dark, damp doorways at the water side of structures echo for the Commissario the complicated families around him, some with pedigrees nearly as long at the city's.

THE GOLDEN EGG is far from a standard crime novel, however. Leon opens at the Brunetti home, where one of the most endearing of crime fiction couples, Guido and his wife Paola, are enjoying an evening meal and conversation with their two teenaged children. The family plays a word game in the conversation: One offers and ending, the next provides a sentence or two that preceded the end of a story, and so on, back to someone proposing the first sentence of the "story written in air."

The game quickly becomes a metaphor for detective work, as Guido receives a phone call at work from his distressed wife. Paola's abrupt question to him -- "You know the boy who doesn't talk? At the dry cleaner's?" -- is a lead-in to letting her husband know the "boy" is dead. Actually it's a young man who's died, and the assumption has been that he is deaf, and perhaps also "dumb," not just in the sense of unable to speak, but also in terms of mental capacity.

Yet both Guido and Paola find the abrupt and probably suicidal (surely not criminal) ending to this nameless young man's life tragic, and both feel guilty that in all the years they've used the cleaning service where the "boy" has done simple tasks, they never asked his name. Guido, mired at work in a highly political assignment for his reliably self-centered boss, begins to probe the death.

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.

Donna Leon, BEASTLY THINGS: Italy and Animal Cruelty (Another Short Mention)

You'll need a strong stomach for BEASTLY THINGS, this year's offering in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series from Donna Leon. It's not the murder that's so upsetting this time -- and there are plenty of warmly interesting scenes with Signora Elettra at the "office" and Guido's reassuringly sane family at home.

But the murder is rooted in the wholesale animal butchering necessary to feed an omnivorous city, Venice, and the details are powerful. When Brunetti takes along his sidekick Vianello to see what had worried the victim of the crime, they're unprepared for the horror inside the slaughterhouse.

Vianello broke first. He pushed past Brunetti, no longer concerned with Bianchi and his opinion, or any opinion at all, and staggered drunkenly to the door. He pushed at is uselessly, then pounded it twice and gave it a kick. ... Brunetti could see Vianello walking away from them, one hand raised to shoulder height beside him, as if to keep it there, ready to grab on to the wire wall of the walkway should he not be able to continue.

A good read, with all the best reassurances of a sturdy and enjoyable crime/police series, and a disturbing aftertaste that may change your approach to dinner. Glad to see that Leon finally has a pro website, on which there are some great resources to explore: http://www.donnaleon.net.