One of Leon's best | Blood from a Stone (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries)

Perfect Pacing and Delicious Accents in David Colacci's Reading | Blood from a Stone (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries) | Donna Leon

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	• Blood from a Stone (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries) Donna Leon Sound Library, 2005 average customer review:based on 24 reviews view larger image
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Bellissimo for Guido

Guido Brunetti is one of the most intriguing crime-solvers to capture my attention in years. He is filled with angst to rival Martha Grimes' Richard Jury. This one provoked a lot of thought about the treatment of Italy's version of illegal immigrants, had my mouth watering whenever he paused to eat fresh pasta with his wonderful family, and fleshed out the side characters a bit more.

One of Leon's best

This novel fools you. Good writing and a strong sense of the mood and style of Venice are one of Donna Leon's strengths. Unfortunately, in some of her Brunetti novels, these can take away from the plot, and the detective story itself (Guido Brunetti is, after all, a police detective) can drag. Just when the reader thinks that "Blood from a Stone" will be one of these, events start to accelerate, and the rest of the novel moves at the speed of the Eurostar. Brunetti's pulse is racing and so will yours.

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Perfect Pacing and Delicious Accents in David Colacci's Reading

Books full of psychology and verbal sparring rather than action benefit from being listened to rather than read. The professional reader (or author) is able to use timing, pace, and pauses to bring inaction to life and invite you deeper inside the mind of the narrator. I found that David Collaci's reading of Blood from a Stone upgraded this book from a four-star effort as a personal read into a five-star listening experience through the unabridged CD.

The main character in Blood from a Stone isn't Commissario Guido Brunetti, but rather the city of Venice. If you know and love Venice, you'll add one star to your experience with this book or CD by being reminded of your great experiences there.

The book is a near-literary-quality novel, even though portrayed in a police procedural format. Ms. Leon is much more interested in having your think about what it means to be a good human than in intriguing you with her mystery and exciting you with her plot. The book raises fundamental questions about our connections to every other person on the planet, our colleagues, friends, loved ones, and family members. Although the book will seem preachy at times about one view or another, Ms. Leon leaves plenty of room for you to draw your own conclusions. But you'll definitely find your sensitivity honed as you think about more dimensions of relations with others . . . and their consequences for you and others.

As the book opens, two assassins stalk and kill an illegal street vendor who is a black African. The police don't rush to the scene and don't find any helpful information to identify the man. Commissario Brunetti makes slow progress through a combination of Signorina Ellatra's computer and persuasive skills, his own snooping around, and Sgt. Vianello's willingness to provide loyal shoe leather and silence. A visit to the abode of the victim yields more clues, but no identity. The clues raise disturbing questions that don't belong in a police investigation.

Soon, Vice-Questore Patta is telling Brunetti that he should go through the motions and not find the killer. The pressure to ignore the killing grows. Brunetti plays along while pursuing a hidden investigation that features his trustworthy colleagues, friends, and family in off-the-record activities. Why is the fix in? Brunetti can only speculate until late in the story.

The book's conclusion leaves Brunetti with an interesting dilemma, one that you should think about as though it were your own before you find out what Brunetti does.

The strength of this book is in its superb portrayal of the ambivalent attitudes and relationships among the illegal African street vendors, the police, the vendors' customers, ordinary citizens, and the vendors' landlords. Ms. Leon does a wonderful job of getting across the full range of perspectives and experiences. Ultimately, she wants you to decide what the crimes are and who the criminals are in the illegal set-up from a moral rather than a judicial perspective.

If, however, you just want an intriguing and fast-paced mystery, you'll wonder what all of the side trips into philosophical questions are all about.

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flawed mystery but great book

If you are looking for the kind of clear good guy/bad guy, narrow escape, ultimate resolution, loose-ends-tied-up package you normally get from a book in the mystery genre, this one is going to require you to make some adaptations. A murder that first appears to be a simple "street crime" turns out to be something with much larger implications, linked to international scheming and power politics way beyond Commissario Brunetti's ability to handle -- and in refusing to drop it, as he is both ordered and threatened to do, he endangers people who trust him. I found this book both disturbing and wonderful.

Another reviewer has complained that Paola Brunetti's "ultra leftist" arguments have no place in this book. They are not ultra leftist -- they are somewhat liberal -- but even if they were, she is a character in a book, and interesting characters are people with values and social concerns they care about. The moral dilemmas raised for the Commissario are part of what makes this series so absorbing, IMHO.

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On a cold Venetian night just before Christmas, an African street vendor is killed in a scuffle. The only witnesses are tourists who had been browsing the man's wares before his death. Arriving on the scene, Commissario Brunetti wonders why anyone would kill a "vu cumpra," an African purveying goods past normal shop hours and without a work permit. When Brunetti digs deeper into the investigation, he discovers that matters of great value are at stake within the immigrant society. Warned by his superior to resist further involvement in the case, Brunetti becomes even more determined to unearth the truth behind this mysterious killing. How far will he penetrate the murky subculture of the Venetian underworld? Read by David Colacci.

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