Death in a Strange Country (Guido Brunetti, No. 2)
by Donna Leon
List Price:
Our Price: $4.90
You Save: $3.09 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Donna LeonEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-01-04
ISBN: 0143034820
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Death in a Strange Country (Guido Brunetti, No. 2)
Book Review: Good start, not so good finish
Summary: 2 Stars
I've just finished reading Death in a Strange Country and followed that with a review of the reviews previously posted on Amazon. I must confess that I'm astonished at the fullness of praise in nearly all reviews. For my part, I was very disappointed in the book, and I suspect that I won't be reading any more mysteries by Donna Leon.
I say that with some regret, because I have loved her evocation of Venice. I've been there only once, but like most tourists I fell in love with the place, and I don't believe that you ever fall out of love with Venice. Ms. Leon brought it all back with her crisp and compact descriptions, of the vaporettos and the palazzi on the Grand Canal, of the side canals and the back streets, and the Rialto and San Marco and the boat ride out to Murano and Burano. I drank in the map on the frontispiece of the book.
She also delineates character very well. She has a wonderful protagonist in Brunetti, and his wife Paola is also a wonderful character.
I'm not so pleased with Patta, though. He's a one-dimensional fool, not a real person at all. I must also admit to some irritation with the hackneyed formula of having our policeman hero have to battle both the bad guys and the stupidity of the bureaucracy above him. Thus he becomes a loner, fighting the system.
Compare Brunetti and Patta with Jane Tennyson and her superiors in the Prime Suspect series. Jane (Helen Mirren) also has her battles with superiors, but the superiors are not totally unreasonable. Much of the conflict comes from Jane's own difficult personality. By comparison, Patta is a caricature who doesn't seem to belong in a novel where the other characters seem to be real people.
I also must confess that I bristle at the implicit right-wing ideology behind this type of formula: Bureaucracies are always bad, individual initiative, particularly in contravention of the bureaucracy, is always good.
But enough of Patta. Going back to the book, I would like to extend one more compliment before I try to explain what I didn't like. It's this: Leon really knows how to get a plot rolling along. The murders, the events, the clues revealed, all come along at a brisk pace and really suck the reader in, It's a page-turner. In fact, I stayed up till 2AM turning the pages, intrigued more than anything by wanting to see how the author would manage to close such a complicated plot in a satisfactory way.
My answer, at 2AM, was that she didn't. The plot collapsed on her, and she disappeared beneath the rubble.
It's always tricky business to write a mystery in which the bad guys win. Leon seems prone to this kind of twist. She did it before when the bad guys were Opus Dei. This time the bad guys are......well, who are they anyway? I guess you'd say the vast criminal conspiracy that runs Italy. Now defenders of the book might say, "It's a better book because the bad guys won. That's what the real world is like."
Fair enough, but is the book realistic? First, is it appropriate to characterize the Italian nation as a criminal conspiracy? Looking at the Mafia in Sicily and the likes of Silvio Berlusconi in Milan, I suppose that a case could be made. But there are also lots of courageous public prosecutors and journalists and ordinary citizens. The view of Italian society presented by the book seems to me a stretch.
Second, is it reasonable to imagine that a U.S, Army base (post) would join right in in this conspiracy? When in Rome and all that? That's even more of a stretch.
To my mind, the plot started to run into problems in the scene where Brunetti goes to see the Count, his father in law. He's there to ask a favor, but his tone is shrill and insulting. Has he been listening too much to the Greenpeace-inspired diatribes of his teenage children? Brunetti seems totally out of character in this scene. Later, he goes to the palazzo of the bad guy Viscardi, for no apparent purpose other than to snarl some nastiness and lose the argument. Again, totally out of character.
In the end, we have three murders and we don't know who committed any of them. We also don't know a couple of other specific things that I will refrain from mentioning so as not to give away all of the plot. We don't know how widespread the conspiracy was among the military personnel on the post. We are given suggestions that it was at the highest levels, that it wasn't a rogue group. It was the U.S. Army. Really?
And finally, the conspiracy extended to the U.S. military hospital in Germany, where the Hippocratic oath seemed to have been set aside for a while. Really?
So, in the end, what can we score in favor of the good guys? Well, one of the bad guys gets blown away. Score that one point. And Brunetti, in his conversation with his father in law, got a promise to close and clean up the toxic dump and move it elsewhere. Is this a point for the good guys? I can't see it that way. Point A, which is about to come to public attention, is to be cleaned up, and Point B, as yet unnamed and unknown in location, is to be polluted instead. I'd say that was a point for the bad guys.
Summary of Death in a Strange Country (Guido Brunetti, No. 2)
In Death in a Strange Country Commissario Guido Brunetti confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young American is fished out of a fetid Venetian canal. Though all the signs point to a violent mugging, something incriminating turns up in the victim?s apartment that suggests the existence of a high level conspiracy?and Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime. As dark and riveting as its predecessors, Death in a Strange Country will provide Leon?s growing fan base with another chilling read.Literature & Fiction Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Literature & Fiction Books
Little Womenby Louisa May Alcott
Scribner; Published: 1986-06-30; Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.49
Price in other shops:
The Killing Groundby JACK HIGGINS
HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS LTD; Published: 2007; Hardcover; Book
Saving Fish from Drowningby Amy Tan
4th Estate; Published: 2005; Paperback; Book
Life Expectancyby Dean Koontz
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2005-08-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.00
Constant Princessby Philippa Gregory
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster; Published: 2005; Hardcover; Book
Wolf of the Plains (Conqueror, Book 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harper; Published: 2007; Paperback; Book
Saharaby Clive Cussler
Harper Collins Pb; Published: 2005-03-21; Paperback; Book
Perelandra (Cosmic Trilogy)by C. S. Lewis
Voyager; Published: 2005-11; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.70
Price in other shops:
The Lord Of The Rings: Part 2 The Two Towersby J. R. R. Tolkien
Harper Collins Publishers; Published: 2001; Paperback; Book
Red Marsby Kim Stanley Robinson
Trafalgar Square; Published: 2001-06; Paperback; Book
Similar Books and other products
Doctored Evidenceby Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2005-05-03; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $17.90
A Sea of Troublesby Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-08-25; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.87
Price in other shops:
Fatal Remedies (Commissario Guido Brunetti)by Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-09-25; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.76
Price in other shops:
Quietly in Their Sleepby Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2007-05-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.30
Price in other shops:
A Noble Radiance (Guido Brunetti, No 7)by Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2003-08-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.34
Price in other shops:
Death at La Feniceby Donna Leon
HarperTorch; Published: 1994-11-23; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.25
Price in other shops:
Death and Judgment (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries)by Donna Leon
Penguin Books; Published: 2006-09-26; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.36
Price in other shops:
Acqua Altaby Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2009-01-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.93
Price in other shops:
Dressed for Death (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries)by Donna Leon
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2005-10-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.27
Price in other shops:
Death at La Fenice: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteryby Donna Leon
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-07-27; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.05
Price in other shops: