Death and Judgment

Rating:
Summary: Perceptive characterisations - excellent unfolding of plot
Review: Donna Leon is a quietly perceptive and at times a forgivingly cynical narrator of human foibles and relationships under the stress of daily life, politics, bureaucracy and crime.This novel once again brings Commissario Guido Brunetti's empathetic pragmatism and integrity into conflict with the entrenched egocentricity and greed of Venice's and Italy's ruling classes. This is a piece of literature, not just a wonderful novel of crime and detection. Leon manages to make us question our assumptions about everything from political apathy and corruption, to what is honour, and how we live out our values. What a gift this woman must be to her students. Highly recommended for a desert island collection, as well as being a great primer for visitors to Venice. Not to mention being a damn good read.

Rating:
Summary: Sometimes the underworld is so ugly...
Review: The fourth in a five book series (oh, that Donna Leon would keep writing these....), Death and Judgment brings us back to our dear detective, Guido Brunetti and his family, and his work in Venice. I will steal from a reviewer who suggested that Leon writes three novels in one: about murder, about Venice, and about relationships, because it is true and it is just this that brings us back again and again to see what Brunetti is up against this time. An important lawyer is found dead on the train from Padua to Venice (and of course, Brunetti's supervisor, Patti urges him to consider this a simple robbery "gone bad"). At about the same time a large truck slides off an ice-y mountain road in Northern Italy and the dead bodies of a number of young women are discovered in the back (crushed by the load of lumber in the truck). Then when the dead lawyer's accountant is also found murdered, Brunetti slowly begins to find the connections and uncovers a horrible web of international prostitution and a pornographic film industry built by some truly evil but highly influential and powerful Venetian citizens. As Leon always involves us with Guido's family, especially his dear wife (and local English professor) and children, this novel is no different and Guido's precocious daughter actually helps him solve this case, which has a typically complex yet logical conclusion.