Venetian violence (Doctored Evidence - Donna Leon)

Name: sunmeilan

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Product:	Doctored Evidence - Donna Leon
Date:	06/06/06 (113 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good plot and characters

Disadvantages: Similar to other authors

Introduction
Donna Leon is another author, like Michael Dibdin and Magdalen Nabb, who has spent time in Italy and has used her time there to her advantage and written a series of crime fiction novels. I’ve been meaning to pick up one of her novels for a while, because she has had good write-ups and got hold of this one, the eleventh in the series of books featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

The author
Donna Leon has lived and worked in Venice for over twenty years, where she teaches English literature at university. She has also lived abroad in China and the Middle East. She wrote her first Brunetti novel in 1992, which was inspired by a fake plan that she and a friend made to kill someone they found obnoxious. She won a CWA Silver Dagger Award in 2000.

The plot
An elderly woman, Signora Battestini, detested by most of the neighbourhood, is found brutally murdered in her home. Despite the number of people who were happy to see her dead, suspicion immediately falls on her Romanian maid, who seems to have fled the murder scene. She is traced to a train on the Romanian border where Venetian police catch up with her. She flees and is mown down by a passing train. Case closed…or so it seems.

Three weeks later, a neighbour whose flat overlooks Signora Battestini’s, returns from abroad, where she had not heard about the murder. When she finds out, she immediately contacts the police. On the day of the murder, the neighbour, who had befriended the Romanian maid, had found her locked out of Signora Battestini’s flat. Seen clearly by the neighbour, Signora Battestini refused to let her maid back in the flat to pick up her belongings. The neighbour took the maid to the station, where she gave her some money and saw her onto a train for Romania. The dead maid’s innocence proved, Brunetti is put in charge of the case to track down the real murderer.

The characters
Brunetti is clearly a character who has been developed over the course of the series, as such we don’t find out a whole lot about him in this book. One factor that stands out though, is that, in a world where corrupt politics and bureaucracy are common, Brunetti stands about this and is known for his morals. The odd time that he needs to avoid the red tape, he is forced to turn a blind eye to his colleagues, who pretend that they have got their information from appropriate sources. This is the main thing that distinguishes Brunetti from Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen – apart from that, there are quite a few similarities – both tend to work alone and are good at thinking outside the box. Just to further emphasise the difference between the two, Brunetti is in a secure relationship, married to his wife Paola, who is from wealthy and influential family. It is through Paola that Donna Leon tries to bring in a more literary, high-brow element – in this book, religion and the seven deadly sins are brought in as a back-drop.

Conclusion
I did enjoy this book. I thought it was well-written and I quite liked Brunetti as a character. Unfortunately for Donna Leon, I read this after a spate of reading crime fiction based in Italy, both by Italian and English authors and although each author brings something different to the genre, I have got a little tired of them – to the extent that I find that the plots are all beginning to merge into one. I also thought that the seven deadly sins concept was out of place in this book and totally unnecessary, adding nothing to my enjoyment of the plot. Compared to Magdalen Nabb, Donna Leon’s books are definitely superior, but I think if I had to choose between the main three English-speaking authors that base their work in Italy, Michael Dibdin has to win. His books have a raw element to them that I just didn’t find here.

At the same time, after a long break from this type of book, I would like to return to Donna Leon’s work. There are definitely some good things about her work and I would like to start from the beginning of the series so that I can build up more of a picture of Brunetti. I think anyone wanting to read anything by Donna Leon, probably should start from the beginning. I’m giving this book three stars, but I do still recommend this book to fans of crime fiction – just make sure you read it as a one off and not as a long string of books set in Italy.

This book is available from Amazon for £3.99. Published by Arrow, it has 336 pages. ISBN: 0099446758

Summary: So so