The temptation of forgiveness

Donna Leon

Book - 2018

An accident involving the father of a boy suspected of doing drugs finds Commissario Guido Brunetti pursuing a series of false and contradictory leads before uncovering a long-standing scam and unleashing unintentional consequences.

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MYSTERY/Leon, Donna
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Subjects
Genres
Detective and mystery fiction
Mystery fiction
Published
New York : Atlantic Monthly Press 2018.
Language
English
Main Author
Donna Leon (author)
Physical Description
300 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780802127754
Contents unavailable.
Review by New York Times Review

IMPEACHMENT: A Citizen's Guide, by Cass R. Sunstein. (Harvard University, paper, $7.95.) True to its subtitle, Sunstein's short book is a guide to everything you need to know about impeachment. This topic has taken on new urgency, though Sunstein does not take up the Trump presidency directly. THE TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS, by Donna Leon. (Atlantic Monthly, $26.) Commissario Guido Brunetti embarks on another atmospheric Venetian criminal investigation, this time coming to the aid of a woman whose husband has been attacked on one of the city's stone bridges. A TOKYO ROMANCE: A Memoir, by lan Buruma. (Penguin Press, $26.) The editor of The New York Review of Books recaptures his youthful experiences in the avant-garde film and theater world of the postwar city. "I always felt drawn to outsiders," Buruma writes. "Hovering on the fringes was where I liked to be." A LONG WAY FROM HOME, by Peter Carey. (Knopf, $26.95.) This latest novel from the author of "True History of the Kelly Gang" and "Oscar and Lucinda" follows a married couple and their bachelor neighbor on a bumptious 10,000-mile auto race in 1950s Australia. MY FATHER'S WAKE: How the Irish Teach Us How to Live, Love and Die, by Kevin Toolis. (Da Capo, $26.) The hospital death of Toolis's brother, followed by his father's death in small-town Ireland, led him to examine death rituals around the world. The Irish wake, he says, is "the best guide to life you could ever have." THE NEIGHBORHOOD, by Mario Vargas Llosa. (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26.) Written telenova-style, with chapters alternating among various characters, Vargas Llosa's 20 th novel is an edgy send-up of life in Peru before the downfall of Alberto Fujimori. Wealthy friends find themselves in a difficult situation when one is blackmailed by a tabloid editor and the other, a lawyer, tries to help. VICTORIANS UNDONE: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum, by Kathryn Hughes. (HarperCollins, $29.95.) Hughes's detailed account of five notable 19th-century body parts topples great figures from their pedestals. Made rather than given, these bodies tell an engrossing story about the culture that fashioned them. THE WHICH WAY TREE, by Elizabeth Crook. (Little, Brown, $26.) Crook's western-inflected novel follows a pair of siblings on their hunt for the wild panther that upended their lives. JULIÁN IS A MERMAID, by Jessica Love. (Candlewick, $16.99; ages 4 to 8.) This picture book is full of surprises and delights as it tells the story of a little boy who, dazzled by the sight of mermaids on a subway train, goes home to play dress up - and later attends the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review

A typical case for Leon's Venetian police commissario, Guido Brunetti, begins with a request for help and moves from there to a crime; with the investigation that follows comes the agonizing ambiguity that has always been at the heart of this richly rewarding series: guilt and innocence in the eyes of the law, Brunetti knows, rarely capture the human truth behind the apparent wrongdoing he has uncovered. So it is here when a friend of Brunetti's wife comes to him concerned that her son is involved in drugs; shortly thereafter, the woman's husband incurs serious brain damage from a fall that may not have been an accident. The two events seem related, but how? As Brunetti pulls at the dangling threads in this case, he finds himself obligated to take actions whose collateral damage outweighs the meager benefits of solving a crime. Meanwhile, he faces a similar crisis at the Questura, where his longtime collaborator, the wily Signorina Elettra, may have stepped over a line that Brunetti can't erase. Another powerful exploration of the injustice of justice from a master of character-rich crime fiction. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Guido Brunetti may be the most beloved protagonist in crime fiction, and if his shoulders are stooping over so many encounters with human tragedy, his fans will feel only excitement at the prospect of joining him in his twenty-seventh adventure.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2018 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Leon's thought-provoking 27th Commissario Guido Brunetti novel (after 2017's Earthly Remains), Elisa Crosera, a university colleague of Brunetti's wife, fears that her teenage son has fallen prey to unidentified drug dealers and approaches him for help. Armed only with an informant's tip, the Venetian policeman checks into the activities of a longtime dealer recently released from prison. When Crosera's accountant husband, Tullio Gasparini, is found on a bridge, suffering from serious head injuries, Brunetti wonders whether Gasparini was pursuing his own investigation and posed a threat to his son's drug connections. As Brunetti looks into Gasparini's movements and background, he uncovers strange behavior by Gasparini's aged aunt that may point to more sinister doings. Amid the procedural aspects of the case, vivid descriptions of Venice, and interludes with Brunetti's pesky superior, Leon offers intelligent reflections on the fallout that can harm both innocent and guilty in the quest for justice. Agent: Susanna Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A dying drug dealer and an elderly woman dressed in head-to-toe satin are among the lifelong Venetians whose apartments we visit, alongside Commissario Guido Brunetti, in Leon's leisurely 27th mystery.As the book opens, Brunetti has two unsettling meetings. First, his boss, the pompous and dim Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, calls him into his office to ask about rumors that someone at the Questura has been leaking classified informationand possibly also spreading gossip about Patta's henchman, Lt. Scarpa. Then Brunetti is visited by a woman he recognizes as a colleague of his wife, Paola, who teaches English literature at the university. Professoressa Elisa Crosera thinks her son is in trouble, probably with drugs, and wants Brunetti to solve her problem by arresting whoever's been selling to the students at the boy's expensive private school. "Ah, how wonderful to be able to do that, Brunetti thought. Arrest them and keep them until they went for trial and then have the judges send them to prison....Pity it didn't work that way." Brunetti checks to make sure the Carabinieri is investigating the problem of drugs in the schools and then, "his conscience salved," puts it out of his headuntil a week later, when the professoressa's husband is found unconscious at the bottom of a bridge, unlikely to ever wake up. Could he have threatened a drug dealer? Or perhaps something untoward was going on in his job as an accountant? And what does his elegant but infirm aunt have to do with it? Leon provides the usual pleasures of walking the streets of Venice with Brunetti, guided by the "Venetian system of batlike echolocation" that helps him get around. It's good to see Brunetti admiring his colleague Claudia Griffoni's professional skills and also good that he keeps it to himself when he admires her looks. No one wants their favorite Venetian detective sexually harassing another commissario.The mystery isn't much to write home about, though the last few pages do provide Leon's trademark moral ambiguityeven the perpetrator is sympatheticand, as always, it's a pleasure spending time in Brunetti's world. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

When they were seated, Patta began: "I'd like to speak to you frankly, Commissario." Brunetti ignored the chance this remark gave him to ask how Patta had spoken to him in the past and, instead, nodded and put on a pleasant, interested expression. At least Patta had wasted no time with preliminaries. "It's about leaks," Patta said. "Leaks?" Brunetti asked, resisting the urge to look at the ceiling. "From the Questura," Patta continued. Ah, that kind of leaks, Brunetti told himself and wondered what Patta had in mind. Nothing embarrassing had appeared in either Il Gazzettino or La Nuova di Venezia for some time, so Brunetti was without advance warning about what information might be leaking from the Questura. "These leaks, sir: could you tell me more about them?" "I wanted to speak to you, Brunetti, because you know people here," Patta said, reminding Brunetti that this was still the old Patta, for whom any information about the inner workings of the Questura was to be treated as part of the Delphic Mysteries. Brunetti waved a hand in the air, either to dismiss those hidden truths Patta believed he knew or perhaps to summon them from the vasty deep. "They talk to you," Patta insinuated. Hearing Patta's suspicion relaxed Brunetti and told him that, though the subject might be new, the old, adversarial order had been restored. He tossed away his momentary warming towards Patta and returned to his native good sense. "What is it you think they've been talking about Vice-Questore?" Patta cleared his throat with a small noise. "I've heard rumors that some people are displeased with Lieutenant Scarpa," Patta said, struggling, it seemed, to keep indignation from his voice. Then, more calmly, as though he considered it of lesser importance, he added, "It also seems that someone has been talking about a person brought in for questioning." Excerpted from The Temptation of Forgiveness by Donna Leon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.