Death at La Fenice

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Donna Leon is an American author by birth and an Italian critic by avocation, having lived in Venice for three decades and having witnessed the artistic beauty but also the social and political ills of that city and the mainland it literally clings to. Starting in 1992, with her first mystery called Death at La Fenice, she has written 24 crime capers with an indelible crime-solving protagonist, as unforgettable as the magnificent city in which he lives and works. His name is Guido Brunetti, and he is the Commissario of Venice, a term meaning police commissioner in Italian. In Death at La Fenice, the career of a world-famous conductor with a Nazi past ends abruptly – between acts two and three of La Traviata – when he drinks a cup of coffee laced with cyanide. Leon put the manuscript in a drawer and left it there for a year. Then a friend insisted she enter it in a competition, which she won. Since the prize was a two-book publishing contract, she felt obliged to produce a second Brunetti mystery. Before she knew it, she had embarked on a third, then a fourth, though she still wrote the books for her amusement as much as anything else. (For editing the first three, she paid her university colleague, Toni Sepeda, in prosecco.) Murderers aren't the problem in Venice. Tourists are. Millions of them arrive each year, surging in eager waves into Piazza San Marco, swarming through the Doge's Palace, squeezing onto the water-buses, known as vaporetti, that ply the Grand Canal. Mid-morning, Brunetti might pop out for a glass of prosecco. At lunchtime, he goes home for a meal of, say, sea bass baked with fresh artichokes, lemon and rosemary. The family's apartment is at the top of five flights of stairs, with views over the Grand Canal from the terrace. Brunetti, who relaxes by reading Greek and Roman history, discovered after he and Paola bought the place that the previous owners had built it illegally, simply adding another floor to an existing building. The one blot on his happiness is the niggling fear that someone in the city administration will find out about it: "The bribes would be ruinous."

In Leon's 16th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, at once astringent yet lyrical, two rival police forces—Brunetti and his Venetian colleagues and the carabinieri—are both Continue reading » He glanced up into the horseshoe of the still darkened hall, tried to smile, failed, and abandoned the attempt. “Excuse, ladies and, gentlemen, the difficulty. The opera will now continue.” But there are compensations, and she was reminded of them when a tram on which she was travelling in Amsterdam a few years ago stopped suddenly, throwing her onto the floor. "I stood up and looked around, and the tram was full of people who couldn't have cared less if my head had fallen off when I fell over." She knew that if it had been an Italian tram, the response would have been different. Brunetti is painted as a sensitive man who, despite his long years as a detective, has a distaste for the violence he encounters in his work. This is in line with the cozy genre itself, with its general avoidance of excessive violence. Leon rounds out his character throughout the book by giving several glimpses into his past, enabling the reader to understand his character. Unbekannter Einband. Condition: Gut. schief gelesen, Artikel stammt aus Nichtraucherhaushalt! K7420 Sprache: Deutsch Gewicht in Gramm: 500.

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Well written with believable characters. Story moves along nicely, descriptive scenes add to the mood and more importantly a believable tale. Guido Brunetti is a very likeable police detective. He is hard-working, sincere, and seemingly uncorrupt. This first book in the prolific series fleshes out the character of Guido Brunetti, his family, his habits and personality. The city of Venice is a character in its own right.

The feeling that tourists are lowering the tone of the place, and trampling it to death, is not new. "Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice," the American author Henry James wrote in 1882, "there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors." Over time, she has become deeply disillusioned by Italy's graft-ridden, dysfunctional political and economic systems. "Living here maddens me every day," she says. The heady atmosphere of Venice and a galaxy of fully realized characters enrich this intriguing and finally horrifying tale, the fourth featuring Guido Brunetti, the stalwart and worldly Commissioner Continue reading » Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth Growing up in New Jersey, Leon was the kind of conscientious kid who finished her homework before she went out to play (as an author, she delivers manuscripts on time or even early). But as she grew older, she realised she was completely devoid of ambition. "I just wanted to have fun." After finishing university, she accompanied an old schoolfriend to Italy and found an entire nation in tune with her philosophy. "I was just blown away by it," she says. "By the food, by the coffee, by the people. By how pretty the people were. They're the most beautiful people on the planet."During intermission at the famed La Fenice Opera House in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned and suspects abound. Commissario Brunetti, a native Venetian, seeks to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder.” This month World Book Club talks to award-winning American writer Donna Leon about her celebrated novel Death at La Fenice. Providing insight into Venetian society through the lens of a gripping intellectual mystery, this atmospheric tale from Leon (Uniform Justice, etc.) finds Continue reading » I am a big fan of series and am glad I began with Book #1. I have already started Book #2, Death in a Strange Country. I think I have many hours of enjoyable reading ahead of me!

Music is a source of consolation to Leon. "I can't sing," she says. "And I can't read music. I just like it. Particularly baroque music. Particularly baroque vocal music." The operas of Handel are her idea of heaven. With the money earned from her books, she has supported two European opera orchestras, Il Complesso Barocco and Il Pomo d'Oro. Besides providing funds, she travels to performances, writes program notes and organises recordings. As far as she is concerned, this is her most important work. "I'm not particularly proud of the books. I'm much prouder of the music." From the first gallery, there came a burst of coughing; someone dropped a book, perhaps a purse; but the door to the corridor behind the orchestra pit remained dosed. Commissario Guido Brunetti, out of a sense of guilt and at the urging of his compassionate wife, investigates the suspicious death of a disabled man, Davide Cavanella, in Leon’s intriguing 22nd Continue reading » The series’ popularity has also led to the publication of a cookbook, a tour book of Venice based upon Brunetti’s own walks, and a walking tour of Venice authorized by Donna Leon. Overall Reaction:

Venezianisches Finale. Commissario Brunettis erster Fall. Roman. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Monika Elwenspoek. Originaltitel: Death at La Fenice. - (Diogenes Taschenbuch, detebe 22780). There are currently 32 books in this series with the 32nd title, So Shall You Reap, published in 2023. Unbekannter Einband. Condition: Gut. außen mit Gebrauchsspuren, sonst innen guter Zustand, Artikel stammt aus Nichtraucherhaushalt! BU3304 Sprache: Deutsch.