Reading matters

'Acqua Alta' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Pan Books; 399  pages; 1996.

Acqua Alta is the fifth book in Donna Leon's series of crime novels set in Venice starring Commissario Guido Brunetti.

In this book we are re-acquainted with American art historian Brett Lynch, who appeared in Leon's first book Death at La Fenice, and her lesbian lover, the beautiful operatic diva Flavia Petrelli.

Brett, who organised a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, is brutally attacked by two men, who warn her off keeping an appointment with Dottor Semenzato, the director of the museum at the Doges Palace.

While Brett recovers in hospital, Guido Brunetti launches an investigation, seeking a motive for the crime. Amid the winter rains that lead to acqua-alta (high tide), he slowly unravels a network of lies and corruption in the art world...

'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**

'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon

Fiction - paperback; Arrow Books; 338  pages; 2004 (originally published 1992).

Until very recently I was not aware that Donna Leon's books were set in Venice. I had seen her books cluttering shelves in every book store I've ever haunted but for some weird reason I had never been inclined to pick one up, much less read one. Silly me.

Death at La Fenice introduces us to Leon's creation, the quiet family man and police detective Guido Brunetti. It also introduces us to the mysterious, romantic beauty of Venice's canals and alleyways, her bridges, beautiful buildings and sense of history.