As I love the idea of reading a book that is set somewhere that I am visiting, I finally picked up my first Donna Leon book when I visited The Aldeburgh Bookshop. The aim was to read this when I was in-visit, however, I ended up reading it when we had moved on to Florence – at least we were in the same country…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, as I read it, I decided that I have left it far too long to pick up a book by Donna Leon. I absolutely loved this piece of crime fiction: a police procedural in style. It took me to the classic crime genre, reminding me of my favourites, like Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse. However, it was quite nice to read about a detective who does not seem (so far) to have a particular demon haunting him, other than his potential dislike for social hierarchy. He definitely seemed to lean to the left.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By he, I of course mean Commissario Brunetti. A likeable main character who loves his city of Venice. Especially as Venice becomes not just the setting but almost a character in the book. After all, it is a city that can steal your heart and it is full of fascinating stories everywhere you look.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this story, I solved it just slightly ahead of Commissario Brunetti, and I am okay with that, as this is a traditional crime story, and I enjoyed following the clues to find a solution. This does not mean that this is a simple story, as there are some quite complex characters, but it means that it is a book that wants to be a crime story, and you follow Brunetti as she solves his crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are twists as the case unfolds, and some dark themes, but this is not a thriller – this is a true crime story, and that was exactly why I enjoyed it. It has not been written to shock, it has been written to be a good story. And that story has stood the test of time, as I did not realise how long ago this book had actually been published (1992) – the bonus of that, of course, is that I have so many Donna Leon books to read – and that makes me very happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I love the idea of reading a book that is set somewhere that I am visiting, I finally picked up my first Donna Leon book when I visited The Aldeburgh Bookshop. The aim was to read this when I was in-visit, however, I ended up reading it when we had moved on to Florence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1265,181,1362,1363,36],"class_list":["post-2382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-a-year-in-books-2025","tag-crime-fiction","tag-death-at-la-fenice","tag-donna-leon","tag-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jrc7-Cq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2382"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2388,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2382\/revisions\/2388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}