THE GOLDEN EGG by Donna Leon

If you're already a Donna Leon fan, all I need to tell you is that the 22nd Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery was published March 26.

If you're not already addicted to the Brunetti books, you can check out a complete, chronological, annotated list of each book in the series here.

Or you can read a perceptive short review of The Golden Egg in the New York Times's April 5 crime column by Marilyn Stasio. In fact, even if you are a fan, I recommend this review. Stasio highlights the important theme running through this book:

“If the Brunettis had a religion,” Leon tells us, “it was language.” And so this thoughtful policeman is also led to brood over the debasement of language by the politicians and bureaucrats who cynically confuse, misdirect and misinform the public.

In The Golden Egg, language

• is the basis for hilarious dinner-table games at the Brunetti household.
• obfuscates the police bribes Brunetti is asked to investigate.
• is oddly absent from everything connected with the life of the slain dry-cleaner assistant. 
• becomes an important tool in Brunetti's investigations (should he speak Italian or Veneziano? Will his Neopolitan assistant be able to relate, since she doesn't speak the local dialect?).

Language is also the subject of Brunetti's extended meditation in the closing chapter. Here's a sample:

He drank a glass of wine, left the second one unfinished, drunk with the words that crossed the table, their different meanings, the fact that they indicated time: future and past; that they indicated whether something had been done or was still to do; that they expressed people's feelings: anger was not a blow, regret was not tears. At one point, Paola expressed a wish and used the subjunctive, and Brunetti felt himself close to tears at the beauty of the intellectual complexity of it: she could speak about what was not, could invent an alternative reality.

Language is probably why so many of my friends - many of whom are writers, editors, or publishers, and most of whom love words - are hooked on Leon's mysteries. Language, and food. Brunetti's wife, Paola Falier, seems to have few responsibilities at the university where she teaches English literature; she is nearly always home in time to prepare magnificent meals. Fritto misto. Baked finocchio with rosemary. A salad of carpaccio of red beet, ruccola, and parmigiano. Involtini of chicken breast. Cake with fresh black currants and whipped cream. I can't imagine why Brunetti's Cookbook, aka A Taste of Venice, is no longer in print. Maybe it should have been called, more accurately, Paola Falier's Cookbook.

To be sure, readers of detective fiction don't always appreciate the Guido Brunetti series. Some of the books are police procedurals, while others, like this one, focus almost entirely on Brunetti's deductions. There may be violence, but it is usually offstage. It may take awhile to get to the murder - if indeed a murder has occurred. It's often not too hard to figure out whodunnit. Brunetti's wife and children are as important as his coworkers at the questura. And Leon keeps tossing in Italian words, as I just did, without translating them.

Those are all reasons that I love the series, but I don't want to take you there on false pretenses. If the subjunctive, used correctly over a bowl of risotto, never brings you close to tears, perhaps you should read a different series instead.

P.S. If you hate spoilers, don't pay any attention to this book's title.

THE JEWELS OF PARADISE by Donna Leon

After writing 21 detective novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, it's not surprising that author Donna Leon needed a break.

Still, having read all 21 of the Brunetti books, I was expecting Jewels of Paradise to be book 22 in the series. It is not, and I was disappointed.

Disappointed because by now the characters - the lovable detective from Venice; his wife, Paola, and their two young adult children; his sidekick, Sgt. Vianello; his insufferable boss, Vice-Questore Patti; and the indomitable Signorina Elettra - all seem as familiar as Facebook friends, and I wanted to stay involved in their lives.

But my nostalgia is no reason to keep Ms. Leon from expanding her horizons. I was more disappointed because Leon's new book simply didn't hold my interest.

A lot of the book has to do with biographical material concerning Agostino Steffani (1654-1728), churchman, diplomat, and nearly forgotten composer. (Hint: Leon's plot will be easier to follow if you read the Wikipedia article first. Want to hear some of his music? Cecilia Bartoli has a new album, Mission, devoted to his work [you can listen to the NPR program about it here].)

But don't come to this book thinking it's historical fiction. It's closer to historical research as done by a high-school student - and there's no afterword telling us which parts of the story are historical and which invented.

The main character, Caterina, does not seem to have much of a life outside the library. We learn even less about the other characters (though her sister, Cristina the Religious, might be worth a book of her own someday, or at least a bit part in a Brunetti novel).

The plot is thin. Somehow two 300-year-old trunks have been found, and two cousins each claim inheritance rights. Caterina, a musicologist, is charged with reading all the documents in the trunks and figuring out which, if either, has claim to the material.

There aren't many scary parts. At one point, you think scariness is developing, but (spoiler alert) it doesn't.

There isn't even much good food - but I suppose without Guido's ever-cooking scholar-wife, Paola, in the kitchen, there wouldn't be.

And when all is said and done, I know what was in those trunks, but I'm still wondering who the trunks belonged to, and how they came to Venice, and what Opus Dei had to do with the whole situation. Maybe my mind was wandering when all that was explained ...

Why I kept reading: (1) I'm loyal to Donna Leon. Up till now, she's been one of my favorite detective story authors. (2) I appreciate her wry observations about Italian culture and the Catholic Church. (3) I kept thinking the plot would heat up.

If you are a diehard Donna Leon fan like me, you should read it too - and please let me know what you think. I confess that I began skimming the historical parts; maybe I missed something important. If you have not yet become a Leon addict, however, don't start here.

QUIETLY IN THEIR SLEEP by Donna Leon

This sixth installment in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series raises provocative religious and political questions. The story line leads to probability, not certainty. The context of the story - corrupt churchmen and public officials - is suggested, not offered as fact.

Is one of the priests in the story a killer?

Is another priest a child molester?

Did certain directives come from the Vatican - and if so, from whom?

Is Opus Dei a venal, murderous cult - or simply a secret society of the super-pious?

In a city where only 15% of the inhabitants attend church every Sunday, how do religious authorities get so much influence over political figures?

Normally I prefer detective stories to end with the puzzle solved, the criminal(s) brought to justice, and order at least temporarily restored. I'll make an exception for Quietly in Their Sleep (whose U.K. edition is titled The Death of Faith). Maybe that's because, to skeptics like Brunetti, Paola (Brunetti's wife), Elettra (the vice-questore's personal assistant), and me, the evidence in this story for ecclesial malfeasance ranges from persuasive to conclusive.

And maybe I resonate with this story because, although it was first published 15 years ago, it seems relevant to America's 2012 political season, with all our arguing about gay marriage and abortion and contraception and the proper role of bishops in forming public policy. These are not the issues in Quietly in Their Sleep, but our political discussions today, like the plot of this book, focus on the age-old question of just how much power religious organizations should wield in a democracy.

I am a religious person, a semi-lapsed Catholic who goes to mass (Episcopal) every week. I believe churches do an enormous amount of good in the world. I appreciate their call to high moral standards. But churches are made up of, and ruled by, human beings, and none of us is entirely trustworthy (cf. original sin). It is good to remember that Lord Acton's famous dictum, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely," referred primarily to religious power.

After centuries of abuse from religious power-holders, a number of countries fought revolutions and established secular states - that is, political systems that kept church and state separate. America was the leader of the pack. Italy, by contrast, never completely separated religious and civil power. Quietly in Their Sleep describes what goes on when the two powers are in bed with each other. It's a fascinating detective story, not a political pamphlet, but now and then one of the characters' exasperation bursts forth. Here's Paola Brunetti, for example, arguing with her husband about the opt-out religious education their children are receiving in their public school:

If you put people on a diet, they start thinking about food. Or, if you make someone stop smoking, all they think about is cigarettes. It seems logical enough to me that if you tell a person he can't have sex, he's going to be obsessive about the subject. Then to give him the power to tell other people how to run their sex lives, well, that's just asking for trouble.

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If you're new to Donna Leon's mysteries, you might want to check my reviews of book 3, Dressed for Death, and book 4, Death and Judgment; or just start reading book 1, Death at La Fenice. Many hours of enjoyment await you: book 21, Beastly Things, was published last week.

DEATH AND JUDGMENT by Donna Leon

In 1996, while taking an after-dinner stroll in the center of Amsterdam, I glanced at a shop window and found myself looking into the eyes of a woman for rent. I had vaguely known that women from Eastern Europe were being imported into Western European countries and forced to work as prostitutes--illegally, of course, but in great numbers--and I knew that prostitution was big business in Amsterdam. Still, I was shocked. This was a human being displayed as merchandise. Not a factoid, not a statistic, but a person. She could have been my friend, my daughter, me.

Similarly shocking is Donna Leon's fourth Venetian police procedural, Death and Judgment, published just a year before that late-evening walk. Commissario Guido Brunetti, investigating the murders of a prominent attorney and his accountant, gradually discovers a network of slave traders and pornographers bringing their human wares by the truckload into Italy. The human traffickers, he suspects, are not sleazy underworld characters but Italians of such eminence as to be virtually untouchable by the police. Brunetti, aided by a computer hacker with a secret,  systematically looks for clues--until his 14-year-old daughter, who knew the attorney's daughter, gets involved. Then the commissario, a dedicated family man, loses his cool.

I'm reading Leon's books in chronological order, and each one seems better than the one before. Brunetti, his wife Paola, and his daughter Chiara are fully developed characters that I want to stay in touch with (fortunately, I have 17 books to go). Leon's depictions of Venetian life make my mouth water, and her treatment of corruption in high Italian places, according to a friend of mine who has lived in Italy for nearly 40 years, rings entirely true. These are the kind of mysteries I most enjoy: police procedurals that are more than puzzles, thrillers that portray violence when necessary but not gratuitously, novels that feature real people who happen to be involved in law enforcement.

Be warned, however, that this is not a cozy mystery. Death and judgment are messy. You may be shocked by the human face of injustice. You may not like the way the book ends. I'm pretty sure you'll keep thinking about it, though, for some time after you've finished reading it. And then you'll probably go back for more books by Donna Leon.

END GAMES by Michael Dibdin and DRESSED FOR DEATH by Donna Leon

I usually have at least two books going at once: one on my iPod to listen to while working in the kitchen, and one to carry around the house and carelessly leave wherever I happen to have been last. Last week I confused myself. My audiobook was Donna Leon's third Guido Brunetti detective story, Dressed for Death, while my tote-around-the-house book was Michael Dibdin's eleventh Aurelio Zen detective story, End Games.

Guido Brunetti is a Venetian police commissario who, in Dressed for Death, has been asked to supervise a case in nearby Mestre because two of Mestre's ranking police officers are on vacation, one is on maternity leave, and one is laid up with a broken leg. It is August, and it is unbearably hot.

Aurelio Zen is a Venetian-born police detective (now living in Lucca) who, in End Games, has been asked to supervise a case in distant Calabria because the local police chief has shot himself in the foot. It is August, and it is unbearably hot.

For some reason I kept conflating the two stories.

Both books are tightly plotted with just the right amount of local color. Both are by English-speaking authors who know Italy well. Leon was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and has lived in Venice, Italy, for the last 30 years. Dibdin, who died in 2007, was born in Wolverhampton, England, and spent four years teaching English in Perugia, Italy.

Some of Dibdin's books are translated into Italian. Leon's books are translated into many languages, but Italian is not one of them. "They’re not translated into Italian and they won’t be," she told an interviewer. "That’s my choice because I do not want to live where I am famous." In some Italian circles, she might be infamous: her books, like Dibdin's, portray not only the Italy of opera, fine art, and la bella cucina, but also the Italy where organized crime's tentacles reach deep into government, church, and business.

So, Italophiles, which will it be--the Leon novel about transvestites, male prostitution, corruption, and hypocrisy; or the Dibdin novel about kidnappers, treasure hunters, a computer gamer, a movie producer, and a longstanding feud?

You won't go wrong with either author, though if you're like me, it may take a few tries before you become a fan. I read Dibdin's fifth and seventh Aurelio Zen books back in 1999 and 2000 before picking up book eleven last month; I read Leon's first Guido Brunetti book more than two years before checking out books two and three. Now I'm eager to read more, or perhaps to listen or watch: three of the Zen books have been adapted by PBS Masterpiece Mystery.

Based on my small sample--three books out of eleven, three out of twenty--I'm guessing that if you like getting to know your detective's home, family, friends, and associates, you'll prefer Leon, while if you prefer fast-paced action, technology, and complex plotting, you'll go for Dibdin. Dressed for Death rocked along slowly like a gondola in a Venetian canal as Brunetti gathered information and came up with strategies. End Games kept me reading long past my bedtime--once I figured out who all the characters were and how they fit into the story, which was challenging at first.

But hey, you don't have to choose. Read both. Just not at the same time.