Fatal Remedies (Commissario Guido Brunetti)
by Donna Leon
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Book Reviews of Fatal Remedies (Commissario Guido Brunetti)
Book Review: Donna Leon, Not a Gondola In Sight
Summary: 5 Stars
Donna Leon now makes Venice her home. In her mysteries, if you know Venice well, you'll have the thrill of rediscovery as she walks you through familiar campos, stroll by the Grand Canal, take a vaporetto to a destination, eat local pastries and foods. Her detective inspector hero is Commissario Brunetti who has a loving wife, two great kids, and a great home life, but is always at odds with his superiors. He likes those Venetian pastries and all the great food and seems lethargic, but he is far from being slow-witted.
In this outing his wife on two occasions as a protest throws a rock through the window of a travel agency that caters to sex tourists. This causes her husband great sorrow and embarrassment, but he is even more aggravated when a murder connected to her action takes place. The book's title is very appropriate to the plot.
In the beginning is the description of a clever game. When the staff attends boring meetings, they play buzz word bingo. When the meeting's chairman says a certain buzz word, they can relieve boredom by matching the buzz word up with specially prepared cards that have the buzz words instead of bingo numbers.
The narrative rolls along smoothly as the gentle, kindly, philosophical Brunetti copes with police work as well as the corruption and inefficiency of the Italian state. Brunetti says, "There are days when I think everything's getting worse, then there are days when I know they are. But then the sun comes out, and I change my mind."
This mystery has a very sharp depiction of the women characters and female psychology. It even has a gun fight. But in general Leon's mysteries have more reflection than action. This is one of her better efforts with a clear cut narrative. Venice is the key setting, but not as much of a character in this book as in some of her others. Little asides about the water damage and dampness in the hallways of buildings makes us realize how fragile the city's infrastructure is. Brunetti is an anti-hero that you come to like because he's an old-fashioned, amiable soul adrift in a society that has, in many ways, passed him by.
Book Review: A Rare Mystery That Will Trouble Your Conscience
Summary: 5 Stars
Part of the appeal of mysteries is that we can enter a world of intrigue, evil-doers, and hidden secrets without any personal danger or discomfort . . . except for the occasional grisly detail. Donna Leon challenges that formula by raising a question of conscience in Fatal Remedies that will probably leave you squirming: I know it had that effect on me.
What would you do to stop a moral wrong that's being perpetuated in front of you? Unless taking a stand is unavoidable, most people simply ignore the whole thing. That's clearly not the case for Commissario Guido Brunetti's professor wife, Paola, who makes life difficult for everyone in the family by protesting in a violent way.
The moral dilemma is raised to another height when it appears that Paola's act may have had unintended consequence. After you finish this book, think about what you should do about the same moral dilemma with regard to something that's legal . . . but highly immoral.
By bringing Paola's personality into the story in greater ways, Fatal Remedies is enriched with a more interesting set of questions. If you are like me, you'll be especially amused to see how Guido reacts to moral issues about doing illegal things to bring wrong-doers to justice. You'll quickly see that there are two sides to the coin of does the end justify the means.
The ultimate mystery is solved in the second half of the book where the condensation does no harm to making a good story.
I listened to the unabridged Blackstone Audio version of Fatal Remedies that is read by Anna Fields. I recommend that you avoid this audio. Although Ms. Fields can speak quite good Italian as she demonstrates on the audio, she chooses to render the male characters in English as though they were from the country in the U.S. south. This style particularly perturbed me because I had thought of Guido Brunetti as a refined person based on his reading tastes and subtle handling of boors. He comes across in this reading sounding much like Dean Robillard, the NFL quarterback in Natural Born Charmers which Ms. Field also read.
Book Review: Donna Leon's Venice
Summary: 4 Stars
Joan Didion once wrote that some locations are owned by the writers who capture them best - Paris belongs to Hemingway, parts of California to Steinbeck, etc. So I wonder if it is time to suggest an American mystery writer, Donna Leon, owns Venice? Reading a Leon murder mystery is an opportunity to spend time in Venice with a long time resident who knows all the best gossip.
I invariably enjoy Leon's Commissario Brunetti series and this is one of the best of the five or six I have read. In part this is because it brings Brunetti's wife Paola into the forefront. Brunetti is not one of these type A hard boiled, my life is my work type detectives. He has a life, a full one, is quite happily married and the father of two children. Indeed scenes with Brunetti at home or in a cafe at lunch are are often more enjoyable than those at the police station.
Leon may be better as a social novelist than a mystery writer. There are fewer plot snags here than in some others in the series, but for example, Paola's actions in the first chapter in which she deliberately vandalizes a travel agency known to be running child sex tours to Asia generates a wierd on again/off again level of fame for the Brunettis. The Commissario is besieged by the papparazzi in one chapter, and forced to take administrative leave (which by the standards of the Venice police depicted here, does not differ greatly from a normal work day), then called back in to work when the owner of the travel agency is murdered, and his conflict of interest would be greater than ever. In following chapters, Brunetti is is interviewing the murder victims wife and his coworkers, and no one seems aware of his connection to the initial act of vandalism. Huh?
Am I being too logical? Another glass of vino as we sit by the Rialto perhaps?
Book Review: Femalecentric themes and dull characters do not make for an exciting mystery
Summary: 2 Stars
This book never clicked with me. It combines a pedestrian murder mystery with some feminist (or at least female-centered) themes. Commissarion Guido Brunetti is the main man, a high-level police detective in Venice. He is taciturn, smart, and unrealistically bookish for a policeman (well, this is a novel). He enjoys a fairy tale home life with his wife, the well-born Paola, and 2 kids. In a depiction that seems aimed at distaff readers, he is deeply in love with his wife, an art history professor, is wholeheartedly respectful of all her views and actions, and feels no attraction toward other women.
The story begins when Paola breaks the window of a travel agency that provides sex tours to Thailand. She is infuriated by this practice and, despite being the wife of high-ranking police officer, decides to act on her own. The matter gets hushed up, and then despite the risks to her husband's career, she does it again. This time she gets arrested and the media gets a hold of it. Throughout this (pretty unrealistically), her husband never gets angry, and never even raises his voice to her. Shortly after, the owner of the travel agency turns up garroted with a note nearby calling him a child molester.
Only a desire to see how it turned out kept me going to the end of the book. The writing was certainly competent, but the wit and atmosphere I had been hoping for from a good Italian-set thriller was not apparent for me, and the characters did not really get my attention either. The storyline was fairly typical, and overall, this did not live up to the hype I had encountered (an article in The New York Times praising Leon's work).
Book Review: comfort books
Summary: 4 Stars
This is the third of Donna Leon's Brunetti mysteries I've read. I'm still ambivalent--although I've given it 4 Stars and think I will probably read another. My husband and I watch a great number of videos (Netflix) as I'm a bit housebound and can't get out much. We view art films, documentaries, many of them "challenging," but have also watched a number of (often British) TV series we really enjoy. We refer to these as "comfort vids," which we watch when we just want easy, though high quality, entertainment. The same seems to go for books (as well as food! Music, not so much maybe). I'd place Leon in the high quality comfort category. Her writing is good: good mood, language skills, character development (for major characters) and the Venice locale makes them special. But I always feel that the actual storyline just "fills the pages." Even though the books are short, pages go by that seem like padding. They're rarely taut, gripping, compelling or even psychologically involving (as, say, Elizabeth George can be). The police work, CSI, forensic facts aren't very interesting (and are also dated) and the mystery plots aren't intriguing at all--I don't think much thought goes into them. The good/bad characters are too simplistically "black and white."
Nonetheless, I'll probably read some more, when I want a tasty reading "snack," which I often do after finishing a long, brain challenging book (which I guess would be like a subtle, gourmet meal, in contrast). So, 4 Stars "within category."