Death at La Fenice

Product Information

Heald, Tim. “Donna Leon talks about corruption and death in Venice: interview.” The Telegraph, Telegraph Media Group, 7 May 2009.

I am a big fan of series and am glad I began with Book #1. I have already started Book #2, Death in a Strange Country. I think I have many hours of enjoyable reading ahead of me! Unbekannter Einband. Condition: Akzeptabel. schief gelesen, Artikel stammt aus Nichtraucherhaushalt! BV3516 Sprache: Deutsch Gewicht in Gramm: 500. Brunetti’s own character is made clear to the reader throughout the course of the novel; he is a family man who is extremely good at his job, preferring to investigate motive through looking at human dynamics and understanding each suspect, rather than relying on intuition. He stresses this to his wife Paola, who enjoys choosing who she believes is the culprit at the beginning of each case, and who Brunetti says is always wrong,In this stunning novel, the 14th to feature the dogged, intuitive Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti (after 2004's Doctored Evidence Over time, she has become deeply disillusioned by Italy's graft-ridden, dysfunctional political and economic systems. "Living here maddens me every day," she says. Guido Brunetti is a very likeable police detective. He is hard-working, sincere, and seemingly uncorrupt. This first book in the prolific series fleshes out the character of Guido Brunetti, his family, his habits and personality. The city of Venice is a character in its own right. Donna Leon is an American author by birth and an Italian critic by avocation, having lived in Venice for three decades and having witnessed the artistic beauty but also the social and political ills of that city and the mainland it literally clings to. Starting in 1992, with her first mystery called Death at La Fenice, she has written 24 crime capers with an indelible crime-solving protagonist, as unforgettable as the magnificent city in which he lives and works. His name is Guido Brunetti, and he is the Commissario of Venice, a term meaning police commissioner in Italian.

Blinded, Fasini shot up his a arm to shield his eyes. Still holding his arm raised in front of him, as if to protect himself from a blow, he began to speak: “Ladies and gentlemen,”and then he stopped, gesturing wildly with his left hand to the technician, who, realizing his error, switched off the light. Released from his temporary blindness, the man onthe stage started again. “Ladies and gentlemen, I regret toinform you that Maestro Wellauer is unable to performance.” Whispers, questions, rose from the audience, silk rustled as heads turned, but he continued to speak above the noise. “His place will be taken by Maestro Longhi.” Before the hum could rise to drown him out, he asked, voice insistently calm,”Is there a doctor in the audience?” Such is Brunetti's popularity that an industry has grown up around him. Visitors clutch copies of Brunetti's Venice: Walks with the City's Best-Loved Detective. They take home Brunetti's Cookbook. A German production company has made 20 Commissario Brunetti telemovies, which Leon assures me are "pretty bad". She reconsiders. "No, they're not bad. They're very, very German." What a ripping first mystery, as beguiling and secretly sinister as Venice herself. Sparkling and irresistible.” –Rita Mae Brown

There is little violent crime in Venice, a serenely beautiful floating city of mystery and magic, history and decay. But the evil that does occasionally rear its head is the jurisdiction of Guido Brunetti, the suave, urbane vice-commissario of police and a genius at detection. Now all of his admirable abilities must come into play in the deadly affair of Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor who died painfully from cyanide poisoning during an intermission at La Fenice. The feeling that tourists are lowering the tone of the place, and trampling it to death, is not new. "Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice," the American author Henry James wrote in 1882, "there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors." Unbekannter Einband. Condition: Akzeptabel. schief gelesen, Artikel stammt aus Nichtraucherhaushalt! BX127 Sprache: Deutsch.