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Summary
Summary
In the twenty-seventh novel in Donna Leon's bestselling mystery series, a suspicious accident leads Commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a longstanding scam with disturbing unintended consequences
The memorable characters and Venetian drama that have long captivated Donna Leon's many readers are on full display in The Temptation of Forgiveness . Surprised, if not dismayed, to discover from his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, that leaks are emanating from the Questura , Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised more consequentially by the appearance of a friend of his wife's, fearful that her son is using drugs and hopeful Brunetti can somehow intervene. When Tullio Gasparini, the woman's husband, is found unconscious and with a serious brain injury at the foot of a bridge in Venice after midnight, Brunetti is drawn to pursue a possible connection to the boy's behavior. But the truth, as Brunetti has experienced so often, is not straightforward.
As the twenty-seventh novel unfolds in Donna Leon's exquisite chronicle of Venetian life in all its blissful and sordid aspects, Brunetti pursues several false and contradictory leads while growing ever more impressed by the intuition of his fellow Commissario, Claudia Griffoni, and by the endless resourcefulness and craftiness of Signorina Elettra, Patta's secretary and gate-keeper. Exasperated by the petty bureaucracy that constantly bedevils him and threatens to expose Signorina Elettra, Brunetti is steadied by the embrace of his own family and by his passion for the classics. This predilection leads him to read Sophocles' Antigone , and, in its light, consider the terrible consequences to which the actions of a tender heart can lead.
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 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.
Kirkus 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.
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
New York Review of Books 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