Doctored Evidence [Paperback]

Leon does a marvelous job of introducing her varied cast of interesting characters and some of the current attitudes of Venetians. These include prejudice towards Eastern European immigrants and gays; the dread of AIDS; tax evasion and suspected construction fraud. As usual, we are treated to Leon’s entertaining descriptions of Signorina Elettra’s wardrobe, Paola’s gourmet meals and the current activities of the Brunetti kids, Chiara and Raffi. In addition, we get some behind the scenes insights into the postal service, the legal profession, the schools administration and a bakery.

In DOCTORED EVIDENCE, Commissario Brunetti has become more impatient and seems to excessively browbeat witnesses and potential suspects -- no more Mr. Nice Guy. There are some memorable scenes where he locks horns with the easy-to-hate Lieutenant Scarpa.

The only disappointment was that it will be 12 months before the next Brunetti mystery is released.

Doctored Evidence is the 13th in the award-winning series, and just as good as all the rest. An unpleasant old-woman is found murdered in her apartment by her doctor. She was not liked. Treating her maids no better than slaves, and keeping her television on loud almost every night are just two of the behaviours which alienate her from her neighbours. Suspicion immediately falls on her Romanian maid, who is missing and heading back to her country. As the police catch up with her at a train station on the border, she flees in desperation, and is killed as she runs across the tracks into the path of a train.

Finding a large amount of money on her person, they believe they’ve found their woman. That is, until one of the victim’s neighbours returns from a business trip in London, with strong evidence to suggest that she was not the killer. The investigating officer dismisses her, passing her off to Brunetti, who starts to investigate the case unofficially, and uncovers a mystery far more complex than the one they all suspected.

The fact that Leon writes these novels purely for pleasure (she has said that she would far rather attend the opera if it came to a choice) and not for fame or money (uncomfortable with any kind of “celebrity”, she refuses to allow them to be published in Italy) really shines through this marvellous series. It is infused with something marvellous. This is crime fiction for the sake of it. It is pure and it is wonderful.

That’s not to say it isn’t serious, either, because it is. Donna Leon does for Venice what Ruth Rendell does for Britain and Michael Connelly for L.A. Like many great crime writers, Leon uses her fiction as a way of highlighting things about the world – in this case specifically Venice – which concern her. Indeed, often they expose a level of corruption which Signor Berlusconi would not be at all pleased about! Doctored Evidence focuses perhaps less on general civic corruption – although Leon can’t resist throwing hints of it into the mix – and more on a kind of personal corruption, while still managing to write as piercingly and fascinatingly about the society of Venice as ever. She is in the fortunate position of an outsider able to look at a society from the inside, and she utilises that advantage brilliantly for her portrait of the city. These novels are practically drenched in culture, and their protagonist is wonderfully refreshing: he is not hard or gritty, nor particularly flawed or jaded; he is just a normal Italian, a very moral man who wrestles every day with justice and its ambiguities. Plus, his wife is wonderful! The plots are refreshing, too, in the way of much European fiction: they are much less formulaic than some American or British fiction. Leon’s mysteries are predictable only in their excellence. Doctored Evidence is a wonderful novel, a pure, sublime joy that no reader should allow to pass by.