Recently read: Donna Leon’s Quietly in their Sleep

I can’t get enough of mystery/suspense books that take place in an exotic (to me) place. Leon’s book is set in contemporary Venice, where we follow Commissario Guido Brunetti as he deals with crime as well as the fascinating downsides of living in this ancient city. As much as I love history, art, and the beauty of old architecture, I’d rather read about than experience on a daily basis the vivid pictures that Leon creates of the stench of the canals, the bureaucratic hassles, and the hordes of tourists. In this book, Brunetti tries to find evidence to support a former nun’s claim that some of the deaths of the residents of a nursing home are due not to Divine will, but to human will. He doesn’t uncover any facts that would back up the nun’s assertion until the sheer numbers of accidents and coincidences connected to people in the case seem to prove her right. Brunetti has to fight the power of the Church and the State—formidable foes in this city and country.

A side plot is that he learns that one of the priests who teach at Brunetti’s children school has been bounced from parish to parish with whispers of molesting children floating in his wake. That rings just too true for those of us in this part of Wisconsin who remember several years ago the mystery of the deaths of an undertaker and his assistant in Hudson, Wisconsin. Like Brunetti, local and regional police work led to the solution of the Hudson murders. In the real-life case, the solution included the hanging suicide of a priest just before the police’s arrival.