'A Noble Radiance' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Arrow; 289  pages; 1999.

This is book number 7 in Donna Leon's crime series featuring Commissario Brunetti, but only the second one that I have read.

In this book Brunetti reopens an investigation into a kidnapping that was never solved. The badly decomposing body of the victim, a young man from a noble Venetian family, has been discovered on farm land in the Italian Dolomites several years after his disappearance.

Brunetti has the difficult task of breaking the news to the victim's family and then sets about trying to work out who murdered him and why.

As a story it is a relatively interesting and fast-paced one. But I had some problems with the book as a whole.

**Please note there are spoilers below**

Perhaps because I have only read the first book in the series and then skipped ahead five books to read this one I have missed some of the subtleties in characterisation that Leon has introduced in each novel as the series has progressed.

For instance, this was my first introduction to Signorina Elletra, the Vice-Questore's secretary, and she seemed too good to be true, saving Brunetti much leg work because of her connections (mainly old boyfriends!) and ability to use a computer. I wanted her to falter somewhere along the line, to come across some kind of "road block" that would test her perseverance and problem solving abilities, but it never happened - it made me wonder who was the real detective here: her or Brunetti?

I also found some of the dialogue pointless, and one thread of the narrative - Brunetti's father-in-law reveals that his daughter is unhappy in her marriage - turned out to be an unnecessary red herring that quite frankly pissed me off. I'm still not sure what Leon hoped to achieve by introducing this additional complication and then resolving it in such an unsatisfactory manner other than to annoy her readers.

There were some aspects of the investigation that seemed a little lacking too. Aside from the fact that a lot of Brunetti's leg work is done by his superior's secretary (see above), when he does venture out to do some investigation of his own, he seems to let his interviewees walk all over him. One man even tries to shoot at him and his colleague and gets not so much as a warning. Perhaps that's the done thing in Italy?

Venice itself was also relegated to a minor role in this book, which is a shame, because it added so much atmosphere to Death at La Fenice. But perhaps this was largely due to the fact that the crime under investigation happened outside of the city - it only fell to Brunetti because the family were Ventian. 

That aside, the book isn't entirely awful. The pacing was good (not too drawn out) and the twist at the end was a nice surprise and packed a powerful punch. But reading this has, in some ways, confirmed why I don't normally read detective serials: they don't really stretch me as a reader and I don't think they stretch the writers much either, because they can sit back and rely on using characters that they've already invented without putting terribly much effort in. Or am I being overly harsh?

Still, I haven't given up on the series. I will read another Leon book, but I think it might help if I stick to the order in which they have been written.