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Summary
Summary
On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares before his death--fake handbags of every designer label. The dead man had been working as a vu cumpra, one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and without work permits. Commissario Brunetti's response is that of everybody involved: Why would anyone kill an illegal immigrant? Once Brunetti begins to investigate this unfamiliar Venetian underworld, he discovers that matters of great value are at stake. Warned by Patta, his supervisor, to resist further involvement in the case, how far will Brunetti be able to penetrate the murky subculture of Venice's illegal community?
Author Notes
Donna Leon was born on September 29, 1942 in Montclair, New Jersey. She taught English literature in England, Switzerland, Iran, China, Italy and Saudi Arabia. She is the author of a Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series. Friends in High Places, a novel from the series, won the Crime Writers Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction in 2000. German Television has produced 16 Commissario Brunetti mysteries for broadcast. She was a crime reviewer for the Sunday Times. She has written the libretto for a comic opera and has set up her own opera company, Il Complesso Barocco. Her titles Jewels of Pardise, The Golden Egg, By Its Cover, Falling in Love and The Waters of Eternal Youth made The New York Times Bestseller List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this stunning novel, the 14th to feature the dogged, intuitive Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti (after 2004's Doctored Evidence), Leon combines an engrossing, complex plot with an indictment of the corruption endemic to Italian society. The murder of an anonymous African street vendor, an inoffensive, possibly illegal Senegalese immigrant, explodes into a many-layered conundrum. Italian attitudes toward "Senegali" range from the bargain shoppers' approval of their harmless efforts to earn money selling knock-off accessories to legitimate merchants' outrage at competition from the cheaper goods. After Brunetti discovers uncut diamonds hidden in the victim's spartan room and evidence the room was searched, the Interior and Foreign Affairs Ministries take over the case and all of Brunetti's pertinent files, papers and computer disappear. Enraged, Brunetti sidesteps normal police procedures and taps into personal and professional sources, uncovering evidence linking the victim, the Angolan civil war, the Italian secret service and an industrial giant with government connections. Many of Leon's favorite characters appear, including the gourmand Brunetti's family, the obsequious Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and Patta's irreverent secretary, Signorina Elletra. They balance this dark, cynical tale of widespread secrecy, violence and corruption. Agent, Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (May 26) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Commissario Guido Brunetti's 14th case (Doctored Evidence, 2004, etc.) may be his best yet--not that he'd see it that way himself. The murder is so commonplace that the victim isn't even dignified with a name. He's just the black man placidly selling designer luggage off a sheet spread at Venice's Campo Santo Stefano, his life ended by five shots fired by two equally unruffled killers who give every sign of being professionals. Despite the crowds of potential witnesses, nobody's seen anything, nobody knows anything, and there's no evidence of anything until Brunetti's painstaking investigation leads him to a box of salt with no reason for being in an empty house. Just as he's beginning to make real progress, however, he's abruptly warned off the case by Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, his complacent, incompetent boss. Maybe the reason is simple racism of the sort Brunetti's own daughter Chiara displays when she says dismissively that the victim "wasn't one of us." But maybe there are sterner forces behind the warning: interference from what Brunetti, en route to an understanding powerless to bring about justice, calls "governmental, ecclesiastical, and criminal" forces, reflecting, "The great tragedy of his country ...was how equal they were as contenders." Leon's most adroit balance of teasing mystery, Brunetti's droll battles with his co-workers and higher-ups, and intimations of something far deeper and darker behind the curtain. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The appeal of Guido Brunetti, the hero of Donna Leon's long-running Venetian crime series, comes not from his shrewdness, though he is plenty shrewd, nor from his quick wit. It comes, instead, from his role as an everyman. He is trapped in an impenetrable bureaucracy; his bosses are either foolish or corrupt; he lacks the power to catch the bad guys or to bring about justice. He is a cop, but his workaday world feels much like yours and mine. So it is here, as he attempts to investigate the peculiar murder of an illegal immigrant, a vu cumbra. The victim, a Senegalese street vendor, is shot, assassination style, as he peddles fake handbags to tourists. The murder brings out the latent racism of the locals, and as Brunetti attempts to come to terms with his own feelings about the immigrants, he realizes that the crime is only the tip of an iceberg that he will never be allowed to explore. He soldiers on, though, solving nothing, but doing good around the edges and making some sense of his feelings and those of his wife and children, also struggling with a new world in which the old assumptions no longer hold. Not so different from our own days at the office or nights around the dinner table. Crime fiction for those willing to grapple with, rather than escape, the uncertainties of daily life. --Bill Ott Copyright 2005 Booklist
Library Journal Review
This installment in the re-launched international crime series has the Commissario delving into Venice's community of illegal immigrants, counterfeiting, and murder. CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction-winner Leon lives in Venice. A 50,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.