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Death and Judgment (Commissario Brunetti #4)
by
Donna Leon
With more than 500,000 copies of her books in print in the United States, Donna Leon continues to find new fans for her riveting Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries. In "Death and Judgment," a truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite mountains. Meanwhile, in Santa Lucia, a prominent international lawyer is found ...more
Paperback, 289 pages
Published
January 27th 2009
by Penguin Books
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Death and Judgement[return]Donna Leon[return][return]4th in the Commisario Brunetti series set in Venice, Italy.[return][return]A prominent lawyer is murdered, executio-style, on the train coming home to Venice from Padova. In the midst of the ever-growing corruption scandals in the Italian government, a very successful accountant from Padova, connectedted with teh Ministry of Health, appears to have committed suicide; everyone assumes that this is in connection with the scandals involving the ...more
A very different police procedural! This detective has a family!
Enjoyed this immensely. I realised that it was something special when the hero devoted a few spare minutes to working out how to spell Czechoslovakia, a task he has to have several goes at.
Investigation in Venice proceeds along different procedural lines to Edinburgh or Los Angeles, I find. Cheerful corruption, official sanction - indeed participation in - of the greatest crimes, limited resources and inventive ...more
Enjoyed this immensely. I realised that it was something special when the hero devoted a few spare minutes to working out how to spell Czechoslovakia, a task he has to have several goes at.
Investigation in Venice proceeds along different procedural lines to Edinburgh or Los Angeles, I find. Cheerful corruption, official sanction - indeed participation in - of the greatest crimes, limited resources and inventive ...more
Death and Judgment by Donna Leon is mediocre. There is nothing wrong with it, no obvious fault that kept me from enjoying the read. There is simply nothing special about the book, either. It is a mystery novel set in modern Venice. The protagonist, detective Guido Brunetti, deals with corruption, evil, and tourists while trying to figure out the motive and murderer behind several assassinations. At first, there are no hints or leads at all, and a set of a lot of unimportant-seeming characters. T...more
I really like this series. The mysteries are good, well written, the descriptions of Venice as a beautiful city as well as one that has it's warts, not so many characters that you get lost, yet you can't guess who done it because all the details are uncovered in layers as Guido learns them. You learn the motivations for everyone's actions, the decision process each goes through. And the best part is the scenes with his kids and his wife, an intelligent, strong university professor, with whom ...more
This was a dark one. The main story she reveals is human trafficking, both scale and human toll. I like how she uses Guido's reaction to mirror our own. He reads an interpol report and is astonished by the scale of the business which he until then was passingly familiar. It iis like being used to seeing a mountain in the distance and then when you reach the base, being awed by it's scale. Unfortunately, I felt like the ending was a little rushed. She could have kept the story going with mo...more
Someone is killing people in Venice again. This time a very prominent and successful businessman is shot on a train, then in Padua an equally prominent accountant is found dead in his garage of apparent suicide. But Commissario Guido Brunetti no longer believes in coincidence and when he finds links between the two men he investigates further. What he finds is enough to make most people very sick and disgusted with the human race in general. What I particularly didn't like is that the Commissari...more
Just couldn't get into this.
The U.S. editions of this book come under the title of Death and Judgment. It's called A Venetian Reckoning in other editions. And it's the 4th in the Commissario Brunnetti series by Donna Leon. There are a number of twists in the action surrounding the plot, and much comes to light that it's participants would have done anything to prevent. And the twisting action is non-stop. Interestingly enough, it goes into attitudes of some police in other countries where conditions are so bad in this...more
OK, this is not 4-star War and Peace (that's right, I didn't give it 5!), but a 4-star mystery of the police procedural type. Leon's prose is graceful, the setting (Venice) interesting and her main character, Commissario Brunetti, is good company, cynical but not hard-boiled or world-weary. Only sticking point: the plot turns on the issue of human trafficking, which is fine, and it worked for me, but I wonder whether each entry in the series will turn on an "issue of the week." (Po...more
Definitely not as good as I'd hoped. If you are into this series, read the book. As a stand alone, it's just not very good. The mystery is not compelling, the ending unsatisfying in the extreme, there is a big tease about a little girl with a venereal disease that I thought was going to develop into something interesting and dramatic but that was just dropped. The city of Venice is not as seductively illustrated in this one as I would like.
As a fan of Brunetti and his family as charact...more
As a fan of Brunetti and his family as charact...more
This is a dark, cynical tale of corruption, the madness of men and how men can become so alien from their human side that trading, exploiting, selling and killing humans, especially women, is a way of life and business as usual. The principal characters in Leon's Brunetti universe are set by this book. We have the usual gang : Elettra Zorzi has settled in at the police station, Vianello is the loyal second in command and Brunetti's family in this case Chiara helps out. A new player enters the fr...more
Perhaps not her best, but certainly not the worst. The story leaves little room for Paola's cooking which adds such delightful flavour to some of the other novels; but on the orther hand, as in Blood from a Stone, Brunetti's daughter Chiara receives much more attention, and it is she who provides one of the (unbearably ugly) keys to the eventual outcome. Leon takes a strong swipe at the rampant corruption in Italian society and the sad thing is that since (of course) a single honest officer ca...more
My third of the series to read & I was disturbed by this one. The series is not an "in your face" blood and gore type which I appreciate and this one really wasn't either but the subject matter very upsetting (involuntary prostitution/almost slavery/murder for Third World women who are lured to Western countries by promises of jobs.) Not a story that one quickly forgets. The charm of Venice and Brunetti's home life that I've enjoyed in the other books of the series is in this book b...more
A truck tumbles off a snowy road in the mountains of northern Italy, spilling its cargo of lumber and Romanian women. A well-known lawyer is assassinated in a train compartment. And a 14-year-old girl has a case of herpes....Commissario Brunetti must link these disparate events together, while eating pasta fagioli, cotoletta, duck, and fettucine with truffles, and drinking prosecco and grappa. Sadly, plot developments don't quite live up to the promising beginning. And the herpes, which real...more
Human sex trafficking is the subject of this book. In this case, it's the influx of women from former Soviet bloc countries who have been tricked and trapped into prostitution by criminals who treat them like cattle. Mixed in the Italian landscape are the "gentlemen from the South" who have infiltrated every criminal enterprise in Italy. The careful way in which they are regarded by the police and the average Italian speaks volumes about the Mafia's iron grip on Italian society. Corrup...more
A little disjointed at moments in terms of the clues, and a little bleak at times, but basically a very good fast read, with interesting characters and a mystery that relates to issues that I cared about. I tried to read another Commissario Brunetti book, Acqua Alta, which was written later, and I found it SO pessimistic I couldn't finish it. This one has a mix of admiration AND harsh criticism of Venice. Commissario Brunetti is interesting and likeable, and his family is as well. I will def rea...more
The fourth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery...and they just keep getting better and better.
"On his way to work one morning, Brunetti is accosted by headlines screaming from a newsstand. One paper screams loudest: “The Train of Death.” A powerful attorney has been found shot to death on a train from Padua to Venice, but, for all the sensational headlines, only Brunetti suspects more that a robbery gone awry."
Donna Leon has this amazing way of taking a simple my...more
"On his way to work one morning, Brunetti is accosted by headlines screaming from a newsstand. One paper screams loudest: “The Train of Death.” A powerful attorney has been found shot to death on a train from Padua to Venice, but, for all the sensational headlines, only Brunetti suspects more that a robbery gone awry."
Donna Leon has this amazing way of taking a simple my...more
DEATH AND JUDGMENT (aka A Venetian Reckoning) (Police Proc-Venice-Cont) – VG
Leon, Donna – 4th in series
Penguin, 1995 – Paperback
*** Commissario Guido Brunetti’s newest case is the murder of a prominent international lawyer. As he investigates, a link is found between this murder and the murder of an accountant being investigated by a colleague in Padua. These two threads tie back to an winter accident with a truck going off an icy road resulting in the death of several woman ...more
Leon, Donna – 4th in series
Penguin, 1995 – Paperback
*** Commissario Guido Brunetti’s newest case is the murder of a prominent international lawyer. As he investigates, a link is found between this murder and the murder of an accountant being investigated by a colleague in Padua. These two threads tie back to an winter accident with a truck going off an icy road resulting in the death of several woman ...more
I enjoyed this entry in the Guido Brunetti series. It takes a little while for the separate threads of the story to weave together, but it is interesting when they do. There is also an interesting scene toward the end of the book where the case deeply affects Guido's daughter, who has been doing a little detecting on her own. While the story comes together, I felt the reader is held at a slight distance with this book, and the ending comes a bit quickly. I do like how there are ambiguous asp...more
My second Donna Leon. I did want to read them in order, but the local library isn't helping me with this, so I took this one off the shelf instead of her second book.
This novel enters the very dark world of human trafficking and worse. It's hard to review it, and it takes a moderately strong stomach to read it, but as this sort of thing goes on in real life, it serves as a good reminder of how, behind the nice curtains, some pretty awful things can go on.
I finished reading this at about 3:00 am, and of the three Donna Leons I've read so far, I think this is my favorite. Although the subject matter is difficult ~ the international exportation of women for the "sex trade" ~ the author handles the subject tastefully as part of the novel, yet still manages to show the insidious nature of this social problem. If you want up-to-date information on true facts about this subject, check out this link:
http://www.polarisproject.org.
http://www.polarisproject.org.
Leon brings out the seamy side of Venice in the fourth Guido Brunetti mystery novel. This book has murders, prostitution and the porn film industry involved. I am enjoying getting to know Guido and his family. Chiara, his 15 year old daughter even gets involved in helping solve this case. Paola, Guido's wife, is a bit on the fiesty side which makes for some interesting exchanges. Nice read which shows a swarmy side of life I hope never to experience. Give Guido and Venice a shot.
Another nice installment but I would rather have given 3 1/2 than 4. This one started out with an intriguing event - the deaths of several women clearly being smuggled or otherwise trafficked in the mountains of Italy. However, once the story starts up in Venice it takes an different turn and it's a bit unplausible how it all comes together at the end and why it comes together at the end. I do like Brunetti, his family, co-workers and the other characters Leon brings into the story.
Ah, the mid-90s. I love that early Brunetti still holds up as well as later Brunetti, despite the technological and social changes. Or lack of social changes. I'm not sure how a book so brutally realistic can be escapist at the same time, but maybe it's because by reading it you're sucked into a world full of problems different to your own, where there will always be food on the table, lovingly cooked, and dessert and grappa afterwards.
This is the third book I've read in the intriguing Commissario Brunetti Mystery series. I'll definitely read more of this series as I really enjoy reading stories of places I've visited (Venice.) One of the things I liked about this particular story was that we got to hear a little bit more about Brunetti's wife, Paola and her skill in handling her often absentee husband. We also get to meet his daughter, Chiara, who has definitely learned from her dad.
I am a big fan of Donna Leon, none of her books have so far disappointed me.
Not having read " A Venetian Reckoning" I didn't feel cheated by this remake. Although I do not think it is fair not to have mentioned this.
In my view this mystery is most complex and the best read so far in the series. The story is engaging and presents a difficult and politically sensitive case. I highly recommend it.
Not having read " A Venetian Reckoning" I didn't feel cheated by this remake. Although I do not think it is fair not to have mentioned this.
In my view this mystery is most complex and the best read so far in the series. The story is engaging and presents a difficult and politically sensitive case. I highly recommend it.
Dieses Buch handelt von Prostituerten, Mörder und Erpressung. Obwohl das so dunkel ist, kommt ein bisschen Licht darein. Brunette sucht eine Mörderin, der ein Rechtsanwalt ermördert hat. Aber als er viel mehr über dem Rechtsanwalt herausfindet, hat er mehr Sympathie vor der Mörderin. Am Ende findet er sie, aber viel mehr als er je wissen wollte. Das Leben kann wirklich sehr dunkel sein.
This is the 4th book in the series. I really enjoy Donna Leon's detailed descriptions of the streets of Venice and the political environment (from government to the office) that impacts Brunetti as he tries to do his job.
I also like the commentary on societal issues - in this book it is the exploitation of women lured to western Europe for a better life and then trapped into prostitution.
I also like the commentary on societal issues - in this book it is the exploitation of women lured to western Europe for a better life and then trapped into prostitution.
The second Brunetti mystery I've read brings me a more fleshed out character in both wife and daughter of the Commissario's household and shows off author Donna Leon's way with both dialogue and storytelling.
Though I found the story more interesting than the first I read, Dressed for Death, the ending of this one very much disappointed me with abruptness.
Though I found the story more interesting than the first I read, Dressed for Death, the ending of this one very much disappointed me with abruptness.
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Donna Leon (born September 29, 1942, in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American author of a series of crime novels set in Venice and featuring the fictional hero Commissario Guido Brunetti.
Donna Leon has lived in Venice for over twenty-five years. She has worked as a lecturer in English Literature for the University of Maryland University College - Europe (UMUC-Europe) in Italy, then as...more
More about Donna Leon...
Donna Leon has lived in Venice for over twenty-five years. She has worked as a lecturer in English Literature for the University of Maryland University College - Europe (UMUC-Europe) in Italy, then as...more
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“Though he did not believe, he was not untouched by the magic of belief ...”
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“Vianello had the knack of getting people to talk. Especially if they were Venetians, the people he interviewed invariably warmed to this large, sweet-tempered man who gave every appearance of speaking Italian reluctantly, who was only too glad to lapse into their common dialect, a linguistic change that often carried its speakers along to unconscious revelation. ”
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