Donna Leon’s Brunetti

Commissario Guido Brunetti finds that nothing is as he perceives it, all things are falsified. What’s more, he and his colleagues are constantly being watched, so they must create indirect ways — false ways — to communicate with one another. In Give unto Others, which is book 31 of the series by Donna Leon, Brunetti’s job is even more depressing than he found it in the earlier books. 

For example, early in the book, a colleague sends Brunetti a suspicious arrest report where officers behaved dubiously. But when the colleague phones him, Brunetti can see that he’s being asked not to speak freely: the phone must be bugged.

The friend says, “‘Did you watch that film on Netflix I told you about?’ Making his voice as disgruntled as he could, Brunetti said, ‘Yeah, I watched it, but I didn’t like it very much.’ Then, as though the thought had just come to him, Brunetti explained, ‘Maybe it was the opening scene that ruined it for me: really clumsy, I thought.’ After a short pause, he added, ‘Sort of gave the whole story away.’ ‘Ah,’ Tamiello said, drawing the sound out. ‘That’s what I thought, too. But I did find some of the later scenes interesting.’ ‘Useless, Pietro. I’ve watched other films like that, and none of them has ever been any good at all after an opening scene like that. Frankly, it ruined the film for me.’” And so they go on pretending to discuss a film when they are really signaling that the arrest report is totally phony and that the officers abused an innocent man. But listening devices are everywhere, and conversations throughout the novel have to be veiled or disguised because everyone is suspect. (p 70)

Brunetti is so depressed that for the first time ever, says his beautiful and beloved wife Paola, he doesn’t respond when she asks him what he wants for dinner, but says she should cook anything she wants. She answers by saying: “In all these years, this is the first time I’ve known you – when given the chance to choose what to have for dinner – to decline to do so.” All these meals that have been so lovingly described in the earlier books! (p. 201)

Though earlier Brunetti had enjoyed a meal of the type that appears so often in the series: “a risotto with radicchio di Treviso he’d been requesting for days, both delighted and satisfied him. Paola placed a large platter of cheese on the table after it, explaining that she’d been delayed after her morning class and had only had time to get this on the way home.” (p. 67)

The realities of life in Venice are even more difficult after the pandemic has swept through Italy. Friendly gestures — a touch on the arm, shaking hands, a pat on a shoulder — not acceptable in post-covid life. The mask is a Venetian trademark; that is, the artistic masks related to the famous carnival celebration, and sold to tourists in shops throughout the city. But now. Masks… another thing entirely. Yes, they protect from germs, but there's much more going on with masks. Throughout the first thirty books of Donna Leon’s series, more and more normal life in Venice has been pushed aside by tourist traps — grocery stores, local coffee shops, travel agents, and sellers of everyday clothing or kitchen tools have been driven out of business, replaced by shops selling the artistic masks that the tourists want. But now, after the pandemic, these shops are all dark, with remaining goods left helter-skelter.

Well, I haven't even mentioned the plot of this novel, and it's really a very good one, involving Brunetti and a couple of colleagues. Again we meet the increasingly remarkable Signorina Elettra who can get any information that exists anywhere in Italy, though she's not as critical in this novel as in some of the earlier ones. Together, Brunetti and these colleagues undertake to do some unofficial sleuthing for an old friend of his. I'll just say that I really enjoyed the clever way that Donna Leon unfolds what's happening, and how she shows what Brunetti learns from his activities. The strong theme of nothing being what it appears to be is beautifully developed in this novel -- it's a bit unusual compared to the earlier novels in the series, which is amazing.

Review © 2022 mae sander.