Donna Leon:
taking you to Venice through her novels
Earthly Remains, #26 in the Commissario Brunetti series
For some writers, the setting is an actual character
shaping the stories, a responsive rather than static element in the novel. Writers who consistently return to the
same places also create both a physical and social geography for the reader, so
that upon actually visiting the place for the first time, it seems
familiar. This was true for me in
Tony Hillerman’s excellent series set in the territory of the Navajo and
featuring reservation policemen. Plots often swirled around disputes over land
ownership, tribal rights and rites, and secrets hidden in the crevasses. The first time I visited the American Southwest,
the beautiful panoramic deserts, deep arroyos and stark mesas were right out of
his books.
These characteristics can also be found in Donna Leon’s
wonderful detective series set in Venice, featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti,
a highly skilled and deeply moral investigator. Venice, unique for its maze of canals and narrow walkways
that natives navigate comfortably and tourists stumble through, provides the backdrop
for the series of novels. Readers become familiar with La Fenice (the famous
opera house), the prison, St. Mark’s, Murano, island of the glassblowers and Burano,
island of the lace-makers, the university and the laguna, the large body of
water into which all of the canals flow.
One of the novels takes place during acqua alta, the seasonal flooding
of the city. Brunetti often
stops to drink coffee and wine in little side street bars and buy fresh flowers
for Paola, his wife. You can close your eyes and practically see the city. When I finally got to Venice about 10
years ago, I would humorously wonder if any of Leon’s characters were also
boarding the vaperetto or eating pasta in the same café.
Leon embeds the crimes, while somewhat universal in
nature (murder, embezzlement, corruption, theft), directly in the beautiful,
crumbling city, suggesting an intricate web between people, culture and
geography. Over the course of the
series, she has also created a regular cast of characters who grow and change
with the years. Brunetti is
married to a university professor whose parents are very wealthy and reside in
one of the palazzos that line the Grand Canal. They live with their two children in a fourth floor walk-up,
and spend evenings dining on their porch drinking grappa and discussing
history, politics and art. (Sound
like your family?!) At the
Questura (the police station),
Brunetti works for the oily Vice-Questore, Patta, pals with fellow
officers Vianello and Griffoni, and depends on the marvelous Signorina Electra,
the bombshell secretary who knows people who know people and can get Brunetti
any information he seeks.
The crimes that Brunetti investigates often have their
roots in events that transpired years earlier and it is through his careful
questioning and relentless investigation that he peels back the layers to
reveal the truth. Interestingly, although
Brunetti always finds the truth, justice is not always served. Leon teeters between realism and
cynicism when she occasionally lets the larger political forces and the famous
Italian corruption take the day.
Her writing also reveals a deep reverence for her adopted home (She is
an American ex-pat, having lived in Venice for 30 years.) and a bitterness
towards the forces that would ruin it:
tourism, technology, manufacturing, and a short-sightedness towards the
fragile environment. With
each book, I feel increasingly like she would prefer that I just read about
Venice rather than visit it, one fewer tourist to clutter and pollute her city.
It’s not necessary to read these books in order, but it’s
also not a bad idea. The latest
installment, Earthly Remains, finds
Brunetti tired of the frustrations of police work, taking a break on one of the
larger islands in the laguna, Sant'Erasmo, to
read Pliny, drink wine and recover his mojo. There he meets an older man who takes him out rowing every
day, exposing him to the beauties of the laguna. There’s a lot of just hanging out until his friend
disappears but Brunetti, despite being on a vacation, cannot fight the impulse
to investigate. The novel features
fewer of the supporting cast and presents a more contemplative Brunetti. If you’ve read earlier books, then you know
what you are missing with his colleagues getting less face time, and earlier
books are also more swiftly paced, with the detectives sometimes juggling more
than one case at a time. This latest installment also shifts the action away
from Venice proper, but Leon continues to expand her stateside readers’
understanding of the larger geography and the forces that threaten its
existence. Death at La Fenice is the first Comissario Brunetti novel; stick it
in your suitcase or beachbag or savor it with a nice glass of Italian wine on
one of our upcoming spring evenings.
Then, contemplate with delight the fact that you have another 25 titles
waiting for you.
