Review by New York Times Review
THE FINNMARK PLATEAU is known as a beautiful spot. "Isn't that just the sort of thing people say about inhospitable places?" reflects the antihero of MIDNIGHT SUN (Knopf, $23.95), Jo Nesbo's character study of a fugitive Norwegian hit man. Jon Hansen has fled Oslo for this desolate land above the Arctic Circle, trying to escape the wrath of his boss, a mobster known as the Fisherman. Working as his debt collector and fixer was an easy job - until Hansen botched a murder and found himself in the Fisherman's cross hairs. Although it follows too closely the plot of a previous book, "Blood on Snow," this forcefully written story of personal defeat, despair and salvation, translated by Neil Smith, sends a man off to lose himself in the wilderness - where he finds himself instead. Introspective and sensitive, Hansen is the polar opposite of Harry Hole, Nesbo's far more commanding series detective. After moving into a cabin in the woods with no plumbing or electricity, Hansen settles down to brood about his worthless life. ("I'm just a pathetic, weak fool.") But a few days of that is enough to make him more receptive to the locals. The most interesting are Mattis, a keen-witted Laplander who persuades him to attend a strangely pagan wedding where he drinks fermented reindeer milk, and a 10-year-old named Knut, who introduces him to his mother, Lea, an abused wife (and soon-to-be widow). Lea and Knut are members of a harsh religious sect that promises an afterlife of fire and brimstone for sinners like Hansen. "It's only a stone's throw from the drumming of a shaman and witchcraft to the Laestadians' speaking in tongues," Mattis observes. But to a man desperate for redemption (and a hard-boiled author in need of a rest), this forbidding land, with its peculiar customs, proves irresistibly seductive. DONNA LEON'S VENETIAN mysteries never disappoint, calling up the romantic sights and sounds of La Serenissima even as they acquaint us with the practical matters that concern the city's residents. In THE WATERS OF ETERNAL YOUTH (Atlantic Monthly, $26), Venetians are troubled by an aggressive new wave of African immigrants, the latest street hustles aimed at tourists and the "pharaonically expensive" engineering project meant to keep the lagoon from flooding. Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleagues are also afraid Italy might be losing its edge: The younger officers aren't nearly as willing as the older generation to bend the rules for a good cause. "Soon it'll be like working in Sweden," Brunetti predicts. And while political corruption may be as rank as ever, "compared to Argentina, we are living in Switzerland." But as a dutiful Italian son, the commissario is still a soft touch for a grandmother who begs him to investigate the near-drowning "accident" that left her granddaughter mentally impaired. It's a bittersweet story that makes us appreciate Brunetti's philosophical take on the indignities, insanities and cruelties of life: "Better to think like a Neapolitan and view it all as theater, as farce." LISA LUTZ HAS written a number of clever comic mysteries about the Spellmans, a family of screwball sleuths. In THE PASSENGER (Simon & Schuster, $25.99), she steps smartly out of her comfort zone to write a dead-serious thriller (with a funny bone) about a Wisconsin woman who dashes cross-country when her husband dies in a fall and she knows she'll be accused of killing him. The name of this fugitive is Tanya Dubois, but she sheds it for a series of noms de crime (and wardrobe changes and hair colors and getaway cars) when she's running for her life from unknown assassins. In a refreshing twist, she's not awfully good at disguising herself, so it's only when she's taken in hand by a rogue bartender, a woman called Blue, that Tanya/Amelia/Debra/Emma/Sonia/Paige/Jo/Nora has a real chance of surviving - once she helps Blue bury the husband Blue murdered. "Goodbye, Jack," the unrepentant widow says at his graveside. "Sorry how things worked out. But you only have yourself to blame." ALTHOUGH I WOULD categorically deny it if cornered, I secretly enjoy the various dramatic, even (soap) operatic developments in the lives of fictional sleuths. And there are plenty of these in THE STEEL KISS (Grand Central, $28), Jeffery Deaver's unsettling procedural mystery featuring Lincoln Rhyme. That brilliant quadriplegic consulting detective is no longer working criminal cases for the New York Police Department, which has distanced him from his colleague and lover, the homicide detective Amelia Sachs. In her absence, Rhyme has acquired a brainy assistant, Juliette Archer, also a quadriplegic and possibly a soul mate. At the same time, Nick Carelli, an ex-cop who was Sachs's previous lover, is out of prison and making an impassioned case for his innocence. These are the kinds of intrusions that would normally distract from the forensic detail for which Deaver's darkly witty series is noted. But here they serve to heighten the tensions of the plot and complicate the efforts of Rhyme and his troops to stop "the People's Guardian," a domestic terrorist who has been sabotaging (to stomach-churning effect) the mechanics of supposedly trusty equipment and appliances, from escalators and alarm systems to pacemakers and baby monitors.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 6, 2016]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* For Leon's many devoted fans, the appearance of her twenty-fifth Guido Brunetti novel will be cause for celebration, not only because a new Brunetti adventure is always worth celebrating but also because we won't be able to resist looking back over nearly a quarter-century (her first novel was published in 1992) in which we have come to know the Venetian inspector and his family and to appreciate the subtlety and sensitivity with which he approaches his work and his life. Both those traits are on full view here, as Brunetti agrees to investigate a 15-year-old incident in which a teenager seemingly fell into a canal and nearly died before being rescued by a passing drunk. The brain damage the young woman, Manuela, incurred has left her maturity stunted. There is no evidence that she was the victim of a crime, but there is a grieving grandmother and a beautiful young woman denied the richness of life, and that, for Brunetti, is more than enough to justify his careful poking and prodding of the people involved. His efforts lead to a tangible crime, and gradually, subtly as always, he tears away the scar tissue to reveal the human damage within. Justice is always a melancholy thing in Leon's world, never offsetting the pain that surrounds it, but here, in a marvelous and moving last scene, we glimpse a moment of almost transcendent beauty that makes us realize again how important this series is to our reading lives. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Leon is a regular on best-seller lists these days, but her biggest supporters over the years may well have been mystery-loving librarians and their patrons.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Commissario Guido Brunetti looks into a 15-year-old mystery in bestseller Leon's poignant 25th outing for the Venetian police inspector (after 2015's Falling in Love). Did Manuela Lando-Continui, who was almost 16, fall into a canal, as the contemporary police investigation concluded, or was she pushed? She sustained permanent brain damage and has no recollection of the incident. The only witness claimed that he saw a man push her, but he was drunk and forgot his testimony the following day. Now Manuela's elderly contessa grandmother wants to know the truth before she dies. Leon deftly builds her plot against the struggles of contemporary Venetians unable to afford housing in their beloved city and under threat from hostile immigrants. She draws Manuela and the contessa with skill and nuance, and longtime readers will enjoy insights into the past of Commissario Claudia Griffoni, the inspector's colleague. Fans new and old should appreciate this escape into Brunetti's elegant, sophisticated, yet troubled Venice. Agent: Susanna Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
A new literary mystery by Leon is cause for celebration, and her latest superb novel (after By Its Cover and Falling in Love) takes the series featuring contemplative Venetian Police Commissario Guido Brunetti to a new level. The investigation commences when Brunetti's mother-in-law invites him to dinner, and he meets a wealthy, socially prominent contessa who makes a peculiar request-namely, that Brunetti investigate the near-drowning of her granddaughter 15 years ago. The contessa insists that Manuela was terrified of water and was an intended murder victim. Moreover, the inebriated man who rescued Manuela initially claimed that he had seen another man push her into the water. While Manuela survived her submersion, she incurred severe brain damage that left her dramatically impaired. VERDICT Surprisingly, Leon has crafted a crime novel both more complex and less dark than his usual offerings. In fact, the book ends not only optimistically but affirmatively. Perfect for readers who enjoy Andrea Camilleri's Italian mysteries. [See Prepub Alert, 10/15/15.]-Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., -Morgantown © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Venice might be sinking into the sea, but as long as Commissario Guido Brunetti is around, there will be someone to make sure the city doesn't become a total swamp of cynicism and corruption. This is Leon's 25th book about Brunetti (Falling in Love, 2015, etc.), and the usual suspects are all here. There's Paola, Brunetti's wife, able to whip up a three-course lunch between teaching English literature and reading Henry James for fun. Their children, Raffi and Chiara, provide mealtime repartee that often leads to philosophical debate: "I wondered if it's against the law to ask people for money on the street," Chiara says one day. Brunetti's boss, the professionally dim Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, is once again manipulated by Brunetti, and Patta's secretary, the supersharp Signorina Elettra, as always plays the Internet like a maestro: at one point, Brunetti finds her "with both hands raised and motionless over the keyboard of her computer, a pianist about to begin the final movement of a sonata." The book begins at another glittering dinner party given by Brunetti's mother-in-law, Contessa Falier, at which he and Paola are representing ordinary Venetians while another countess, Demetriana Lando-Continui, tries to raise money from wealthy foreigners for her preservation group. Contessa Lando-Continui also wants to ask Brunetti a favor: could he please look into something that happened 15 years earlier, when her granddaughter almost drowned in a canal, suffering permanent brain damage? This gives him a chance to walk around the city, wondering how "tourists find things, with only street addresses to guide them? He didn't like this new age, much preferred having someone tell him the address he was looking for was the house with the new shutters to the right of the greengrocer opposite the flower shop that had the cacti in the window. Any Venetian would understand that." The biggest mystery is how the reader can figure out what happened so quickly, yet it takes the commissario di polizia the whole book to catch on. Still, the pleasures of spending time with Brunetti and the gang have never been greater. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
