Donna Leon

Back in 1982, while living and studying in Germany (I was 29 and spending my Junior Year abroad) I and a friend were lucky enough to experience Venice during Carnavale. Being in one of the most beautiful cities in the world during one of its most wild and fabulous festivals is something you never forget. I fell in love with Venice and its narrow, winding streets, small, intimate restaurants and feisty, friendly citizens. When a friend offered me one of Donna Leon's books, Death at La Fenice (1992) to read, I jumped at the chance. I am a sucker for good books that are set in locations that I've visited. I've been disappointed in some but Leon's descriptions of the city, its inhabitants, and the day-to-day bustle of the ordinary Venice proved surprisingly evocative.

From Publisher's Weekly:

"A breathless beginning and an unexpected lack of reference to the lush setting mark this lively launch of a projected series of Venetian mysteries. When legendary German conductor Helmut Wellauer is found dead in his dressing room two acts into a performance of La Traviata , police commissario Guido Brunetti is called in. Among those who might have provided the cyanide poison that killed the maestro, immediate suspects include the vaunted conductor's coolly indifferent young wife and those many in the music industry who are offended by his homophobia. Methodically probing into the victim's past, Brunetti also uncovers Wellauer's Nazi sympathies and a lead to a trio of singing sisters from yesteryear--one now destitute, one dead and the other missing. Though burdened by a dictatorial superior and two lumpen subordinates, Brunetti gets help from his aristocratic wife and her well-connected parents. The narrative's best moments involve Brunetti's wry exchanges with his colleagues and the cunningly masked, obvious solution."



Donna Leon's mysteries are not "gay" books by any means, but in this novel as well as in Acqua Alta (1996), a number of her characters are gay and she treats them with a high degree of respect. In fact, in Acqua Alta, the two main characters are lesbian lovers. There is no exploitation of this fact in Leon's writing but this bit of knowledge is integral to the mystery and to its resulting denouement.


From Publishers Weekly:
"In Leon's fifth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, the beating of renowned art historian Dotoressa Brett Lynch draws the contemporary Venetian police detective out of his warm and loving home and into the yearly onslaught of acqua alta, the torrential winter rains. Brett, an American who spearheaded a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, lives with her lover, Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala. With his open mind and good sense, Brunetti finds himself more fazed by Flavia's breathtaking talent than by the nontraditional relationship between the two women. Brunetti's deliberate and humane investigation to uncover a motive for Brett's beating takes him to dark, wet corners of Venice and into a sinister web of art theft, fakery and base human desires. While there may be a whiff of stereotype in Brunetti's assumptions about a character of Sicilian heritage, the action builds to a dramatic and deeply satisfying climax. Intricate and intimate descriptions of Venetian life fill these pages and prove that Leon has once again created a high-stakes mystery in which the setting vibrates with as much life as the story itself."


For mystery fans and especially for those like me who love a good series, Donna Leon is a treasure. She draws Commissario Brunetti as a very human detective, who loves his wife and two kids and who, despite hordes of tourists, brutal winter rains, know-all neighbors and the annual acqua alta, loves his Venice. And it shows.