A Question of Belief - Softcover

Leon, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099547627 ISBN 13: 9780099547624

Publisher: Arrow Books, 2011

Synopsis

Question of Belief

About this title

About the Author:

Donna Leon was named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. She is an award-winning crime novelist, celebrated for the bestselling Brunetti series. Donna has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Donna's books have been translated into 35 languages and have been published around the world. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Fatal Remedies, Doctored Evidence, A Sea of Troubles and Beastly Things.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Leon’s many fans love this series for the Venetian setting, the complex family dynamics, and the hero’s mix of melancholy and compassion, and in this nineteenth installment, they get all of the above. It’s summer in the city for Commissario Guido Brunetti, whose family and colleagues are sweating out the heat wave in largely non-air-conditioned Venice. (Leon does weather as well as any contemporary crime novelist: from Acqua Alta (1996), in which rain-soaked streets became a vivid metaphor for the city’s corruption-drenched politics, to this novel, in which the inescapable heat evokes that same corruption and the way its stench pervades all aspects of society.) Working multiple cases, Brunetti is struggling to find an opportunity to escape with his family to the cool of the mountains, where he dreams of sleeping under an eiderdown quilt. One case involves an aunt’s colleague, who appears to be giving great amounts of cash to a religious charlatan, while another pits Brunetti against his usual adversaries: corrupt politicians (this time it’s a judge who delays trials for a hefty price). As always, Brunetti finds and agonizes over the human tragedies that lurk beneath the creases of criminal activity. He is in the business of assuaging pain rather than solving crimes, especially when the criminals are corrupt officials, who are as unstoppable as the heat is inescapable. Yes, they can be embarrassed, but “if embarrassment were a bar to advancement, there would be no government and no Church.” A unique combination of bedrock cynicism and warm humanity. --Bill Ott

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow Books
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0099547627
• ISBN 13: 9780099547624
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320