Through a Glass, Darkly

March 13, 2006
Last seen in Blood from a Stone
(2005), Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates a murder on Murano, the famed island of glassmakers, in Leon's assured 15th mystery starring the cynical yet diligent Venetian policeman. Has a worker, found singed to death in front of a blazing furnace, been killed because of his environmental activism? Or is this a family feud between the factory's owner and his "green" engineer of a son-in-law? As usual, Leon educates the reader about the charms and corruptions of Italian life (the sensuality of the architecture and food, the indolence and stagnation of its bureaucracies), besides presenting a crash course in 21st-century glass-making. Every character, every line of dialogue, every descriptive passage rings true in a whodunit that's also travel essay, political commentary and existential monologue. And the middle-aged, happily married Brunetti remains unique—an everyman who's also extraordinary: "During his early years as a policeman... people still argued about whether it was right or wrong to use force during an interrogation.... Now they argued about how much pain they could inflict."

May 1, 2006
The Venice of Leon's ("Dressed for Death") series featuring police Commissario Guido Brunetti, also the author's home for decades, has been called a city not known to tourists and not recommended by travel agents, a charge never more appropriate than in this novel. Here family acrimony involving a glass factory draws Brunetti into the issue of pollution and, possibly, murder. When a night watchman who had long blamed the factory's toxic chemicals for his daughter's birth defects is found dead at work, Brunetti is suspicious, even though medical records attribute the child's problems to difficulty during home birthing. What he finds delights his supervisor, the sycophantic Vice Questore Patta, for reasons that leave Brunetti speechless, then discouraged, before a closing serendipitous discovery. As usual, Brunetti's wife and children and the obvious pleasure they take in one another's company add a warm human dimension. Yet the broader environmental concerns raised by the petrochemical complex at Porto Marghera, across the lagoon from Venice, loom even on lovely spring days. An extremely satisfying addition to this superior series. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ "1/06.]" -Michele Leber, Arlington, VA"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2006
Leon's Guido Brunetti novels have been justly celebrated for their nuanced portrayal of Venice and their character-driven emphasis on human relationships. Both of those attributes are displayed nicely in her latest effort, the fifteenth in this long-running and much-loved series. When police commissario Brunetti and his assistant, Vianello, help out one of Vianello's friends, who has been arrested in an environmental protest, they find themselves embroiled in a family feud involving the friend's wife and her father, the owner of a centuries-old glass factory on the nearby island of Murano. No actual crime takes place until the novel is nearly half over, and even then, the death of a night watchman at the glass factory appears accidental. More than ever in this series, the emphasis here is not on mystery--the bad guy is obvious from the beginning--but on ambience and character. Leon delves deeply into the fascinating world of Murano glassmakers, and as always, she lingers lovingly over Brunetti's family life and the commissario's abiding empathy with everyone he encounters. Satisfying as always, but the lack of an engaging mystery plot leaves a bit of a hole this time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)