From the Bookshelf of Reading the Detectives…

Wilful Behaviour (Commissario Brunetti, #11)

Donna Leon

Start date: October 15, 2025

Finish date: November 5, 2025

Discussion: Buddy reads

Why we're reading this: Next in the acclaimed Brunetti series.
[close] Next in the acclaimed Brunetti series.

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What Members Thought

Oct 14, 2025 Susan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The eleventh Brunetti novel was first published in 2002 and shows how the shadow of WWII lingers in Venice. It begins with one of Paolo's students, Claudia Leonardo, approaching her to ask about a pardon for her grandfather, for an unknown crime. She later visits Brunetti and it later emerges that her grandfather was 'responsible for removing decadent art.'

This then is a foray into the past, with Venetian families forced to sell works of art in order to flee the country. Art which has vanished, ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Apr 10, 2019 Carol Evans rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, read-in-2019

I don’t read the Commissario Guido Brunetti series in order. I jump around depending on what’s available at the library. The series is currently at 28, so Willful Behavior is toward the middle.

Paola, Guido’s wife, brings the case to his attention. One of her students has a question about receiving a pardon for her dead grandfather. She doesn’t provide many clues, just enough to make Brunetti curious. And then she ends up dead, killed.

This time the mystery involves events from World War II and Gu ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 29, 2021 Tony Fitzpatrick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A much better novel than Ms Leon's previous effort. The murder of a female college student, who also happens to be a student of Guido Brunetti's wife, Paolo, eventually becomes a tale of lingering anger following the events of World War II, and widespread corruption throughout the Italian legal system. The student was indirectly related to the former lover (now an old woman) of a man widely regarded with distaste for acquiring art during the war at knock down prices, the owners desperate to sell ...more

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Oct 21, 2025 Sandy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery, mystery-detective-grp, read-2025

Another excellent book in the series. In this one we learn more about Brunetti's father and father-in-law. The family is getting along, Paolo gets to expound her views regularly, and Elettra has returned to overly efficient self. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 12, 2016 Mara Pemberton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, contemporary-mystery, crime, contemporary-fiction, contemporary-crime

I have listened to two of Com. Brunetti books not narrated by David Colacci, and they were just not the same experience.

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Feb 12, 2015 Jan C rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, italy, police

I'm not sure if I have read a bad or even mediocre Brunetti tale.

A student of Paolo's goes to see Brunetti. She works in a library. She is trying to find out if she can get her grandfather's name cleared. He died after going to the insane asylum. Much of this book goes back to the politics of WWII in Italy. Much of it was unspoken at the time. Plus it involves looted art.

I started to listen to this but I think that recording had been listened to too much. It kept breaking up. So I switched to a ...more

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