Earthly Remains

February 13, 2017
Bestseller Leon’s enticing 26th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (after 2016’s The Waters of Eternal Youth) finds the Venetian policeman at headquarters one hot July day, questioning an arrogant lawyer accused of drugging a young woman he met at a party who subsequently died. When Brunetti has a heart seizure during this contentious interview, he winds up in the hospital. Prescribed complete rest, he later takes his wife’s suggestion of staying at a villa on a sparsely inhabited island in the Venetian Lagoon. There he befriends Davide Casati, the villa’s caretaker and a keeper of bees, some of which are mysteriously dying. Then, during a fierce storm, Davide disappears. Brunetti undertakes a search that leads to the discovery of his friend’s body and boat. Was Davide’s death an accident? He had been grief stricken since his wife’s death, Brunetti learns, and recently remorseful over the demise of his beloved bees. Along the way to the poignant ending, Brunetti develops insights into nature and humankind’s failure to protect it, as well as the nature of guilt and its role in a man’s life. Agent: Susanna Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland).

February 15, 2017
Commissario Guido Brunetti, taking two weeks away from the Venetian Questura for complete rest and solitude, gets both more and less solitude than he bargained for and about the same amount of rest as when he's home.An impetuous inspiration about how to save a subordinate from embarrassment ends up sending Brunetti to the hospital, where he's diagnosed with high stress and urged to take some time off. His thoughtful wife, Paola, comes up with the perfect retreat: a villa her aunt owns on the nearby island of Sant'Erasmo. Packing four volumes of the classics, Brunetti (The Waters of Eternal Youth, 2016, etc.) prepares to soothe his soul by doing something physical by day and reading Pliny by night. The something physical he prescribes himself is rowing with Davide Casati, the villa's 70-something custodian, who, to Brunetti's delight, turns out to be an old friend of his father. But Casati is haunted by sadness over his dead wife, a mysterious ailment that's killing the bees he keeps and loves, and a secret he's not willing to confess even to his old friend's son. "Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?" he asks Brunetti enigmatically, shortly before the Commissario finds him drowned beneath his overturned boat. It's an accident, of course, but Brunetti's keen judgment, which never takes a day off, is convinced that the timing of Casati's death is anything but coincidental and sets out to find--not the person who killed him (fans of this highly regarded series will know better than to expect much drama in this revelation) but the reason he died. Perhaps the most minimal of all Leon's mysteries, with no suspects to speak of and few details of the Commissario's domestic life or his eternal professional tussles at the Questura. Think of this barely-a-case as a vacation for your own soul.

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Starred review from February 15, 2017
Yes, the soul-destroying demands of fighting for justice in a fundamentally unjust world have been taking their toll on Venetian police commissario Guido Brunetti, and, yes, an uncharacteristically rash action during an interrogation has earned him a two-week leave of absence, but, Guido, really, shouldn't you know that the heroes of crime-fiction series can't take vacations? The hellhounds of that unjust world are on your tail always, even when you retreat to a small island on the far end of the lagoon for some therapeutic rowing. It all starts perfectly, as Guido settles in at a lavish villa owned by his in-laws and spends his days rowing with the villa's caretaker, Davide, an enigmatic beekeeper with a troubled past. Then Davide disappears, and Guido is drawn into the search. Two of Leon's most powerful themesthe all-pervasive corruption at the heart of Italian society and the environmental abuses that threaten Venice's waterquickly bob to the surface. Soon Guido's feeling of sun-drenched calm is clouded over with the melancholic pallor that he had hoped to leave behind at the office. Leon's multifaceted portrait of a man overburdened with human tragedy emerges forcefully here, as the lagoon itself, beautiful on the surface but containing the seeds of its own destruction, stands as a gripping metaphor for the bad choices and intractable dilemmas that infect us all. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Leon has been living and writing in Venice for 30 years, and her novels, with their unparalleled evocation of landscape and sensitivity to character, have attracted an audience that encompasses fiction readers of all kinds.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

November 15, 2016

In this 26th entry in a relentlessly building series, Commissario Guido Brunetti snaps while interrogating a swaggering man implicated in a girl's death. Needing a break, he is packed off to a villa owned by a wealthy relative on Sant'Erasmo, one of the Laguna's largest islands. All he wants to do is go rowing and read Pliny, but the disappearance of the villa's caretaker sets him on a different course.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017

The 26th entry in Leon's outstanding "Commissario Guido Brunetti" series is one of her best. Here, there is an elegiac tone to the plot, as Brunetti is on leave from the force, recovering from an ostensible heart attack. But even the peaceful island of Sant'Erasmo in the Venetian lagoon is not immune to acts of violence, and Brunetti is drawn into the mystery of the murder of a man he's recently befriended. VERDICT Fans of Leon's early novels will find much to enjoy in the depictions of Venice and of the loving relationship between Brunetti and his family. (LJ 3/15/17)

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.