Wilful Behaviour
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Book Description
The 11th novel in the Brunetti series draws Commissario Brunetti into buried secrets dating back to the Second World War ...
Product Description
When one of his wife Paola's students comes to visit him, with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it, beyond being intrigued and attracted by the girl's intelligence and moral seriousness. But when she is found murdered, clearly stabbed to death, Claudia Leonardo is suddenly no longer simply Paola's student, but Brunetti's case ...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"She was eating an apple. The knife was on the table."
Thus confesses the murderer in this eleventh instalment of the Commissario Brunetti series. I am glad to report it is a return to form following the disappointment of the tenth, `A Sea of Troubles'.
This time we stay in the city itself and explore the question of honour. Honour is uppermost in Paola's mind as she teaches her students the works of Henry James and Edith Wharton, but they are also uppermost in Brunetti as events that took place in the city during the Second World War intrude into a seemingly motiveless murder of one of Paola's students at the university. Venice at all times has had its secrets, but those of the war seem to be the hardest to unravel, perhaps because their horrors were too great.
Donna Leon maintains her usual eye for irony and for the age. She notes how, "The Madonna had once saved the city from plague, and now there was a church. The Americans had saved the country from the Germans, and now there was a McDonald's." Her talent for exposing the seamier side of the city, for the things that the Venetians would rather the tourists did not see or hear about, remains untarnished. For of Brunetti's friend Marco, who complains of having to pay bribes to the city's planning office, "so much of what would be sold in his shop as `original Venetian handicrafts' was made in third world countries where the closest the workers ever came to a canal was the one behind their houses that served as a sewer."
I'm not sure that the contrived denouement fulfilled my expectations, but that goes, I guess, with the genre in which she writes. But perhaps my own frustration with her endings derives more from the frustrations of the Italian legal system rather than from her own imagination. Justice - and that honour which is the subject of this novel - are not, it seems, uppermost in the minds of many of those enmeshed in the country's legal system. Nevertheless, Leon is not totally off the hook, for there is something unreal about the fact that Brunetti and his wife only now, after twenty or more years of marriage, discuss what their families did during the Second World War.
It's good to see Leon give Vianello the promotion he has for so long deserved, but the currency has failed to be transformed from lira to the Euro, despite the book originally being published in 2002. Still, it's unfair to moan about these things when Leon has such a fine eye for a wonderful musical metaphor: "As formulaic as a Haydn symphony, the children's bickering had moved into an adagio but Brunetti, in expectation of the allegro tempestoso that was sure to come, closed the door and sat on the sofa ..." I sat on my sofa and read this book in (almost) one go: whilst not an allegro con fuoco, the theme of the novel's steady andante was a pleasurable experience.
Thus confesses the murderer in this eleventh instalment of the Commissario Brunetti series. I am glad to report it is a return to form following the disappointment of the tenth, `A Sea of Troubles'.
This time we stay in the city itself and explore the question of honour. Honour is uppermost in Paola's mind as she teaches her students the works of Henry James and Edith Wharton, but they are also uppermost in Brunetti as events that took place in the city during the Second World War intrude into a seemingly motiveless murder of one of Paola's students at the university. Venice at all times has had its secrets, but those of the war seem to be the hardest to unravel, perhaps because their horrors were too great.
Donna Leon maintains her usual eye for irony and for the age. She notes how, "The Madonna had once saved the city from plague, and now there was a church. The Americans had saved the country from the Germans, and now there was a McDonald's." Her talent for exposing the seamier side of the city, for the things that the Venetians would rather the tourists did not see or hear about, remains untarnished. For of Brunetti's friend Marco, who complains of having to pay bribes to the city's planning office, "so much of what would be sold in his shop as `original Venetian handicrafts' was made in third world countries where the closest the workers ever came to a canal was the one behind their houses that served as a sewer."
I'm not sure that the contrived denouement fulfilled my expectations, but that goes, I guess, with the genre in which she writes. But perhaps my own frustration with her endings derives more from the frustrations of the Italian legal system rather than from her own imagination. Justice - and that honour which is the subject of this novel - are not, it seems, uppermost in the minds of many of those enmeshed in the country's legal system. Nevertheless, Leon is not totally off the hook, for there is something unreal about the fact that Brunetti and his wife only now, after twenty or more years of marriage, discuss what their families did during the Second World War.
It's good to see Leon give Vianello the promotion he has for so long deserved, but the currency has failed to be transformed from lira to the Euro, despite the book originally being published in 2002. Still, it's unfair to moan about these things when Leon has such a fine eye for a wonderful musical metaphor: "As formulaic as a Haydn symphony, the children's bickering had moved into an adagio but Brunetti, in expectation of the allegro tempestoso that was sure to come, closed the door and sat on the sofa ..." I sat on my sofa and read this book in (almost) one go: whilst not an allegro con fuoco, the theme of the novel's steady andante was a pleasurable experience.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio Cassette
To me, the best mysteries can be viewed more as novels than as puzzles to be solved. Donna Leon successfully crosses into this high ground of mystery writing with Wilful Behaviour.
In fact, such a successful novel can be read independently of the other books in a series. Wilful Behaviour also meets that test.
Do you like a book with memorable characters? Wilful Behaviour delivers both with characters that you meet in the novel and those who are described by other characters.
Do you like an intricate plot where all the pieces fit together in multiple dimensions? Wilful Behaviour once again is a good book in terms of this quality.
Do you like novels that reflect other novels, rewarding the well-read? Donna Leon delivers here as well.
Although I have always liked this series, Wilful Behaviour breaks out above the clouds in terms of being much better than the earlier offerings in the series.
In the story, Professoressa Paola Brunetti is approached by one of her better students, Claudia Leonardo, about a legal question that the student hopes Professor Brunetti's husband, Commissario Guido Brunetti, can answer. Guido resists providing any information without receiving more details. He meets Claudia and finds that her question relates back to the difficult days of World War II while Italy was part of the Axis powers. Not knowing much about those days, Guido begins to exercise his curiosity and learns about many hidden crimes from those days.
All of this becomes not so academic after Claudia is murdered, and many new questions are presented. In the process of investigating Claudia's murder, Brunetti learns about new levels of deception and depravity that some employ to achieve their selfish ends.
I have read a number of novels that relate to those days in World War II in Italy, and I found this one to be one of the very best.
Enjoy!
In fact, such a successful novel can be read independently of the other books in a series. Wilful Behaviour also meets that test.
Do you like a book with memorable characters? Wilful Behaviour delivers both with characters that you meet in the novel and those who are described by other characters.
Do you like an intricate plot where all the pieces fit together in multiple dimensions? Wilful Behaviour once again is a good book in terms of this quality.
Do you like novels that reflect other novels, rewarding the well-read? Donna Leon delivers here as well.
Although I have always liked this series, Wilful Behaviour breaks out above the clouds in terms of being much better than the earlier offerings in the series.
In the story, Professoressa Paola Brunetti is approached by one of her better students, Claudia Leonardo, about a legal question that the student hopes Professor Brunetti's husband, Commissario Guido Brunetti, can answer. Guido resists providing any information without receiving more details. He meets Claudia and finds that her question relates back to the difficult days of World War II while Italy was part of the Axis powers. Not knowing much about those days, Guido begins to exercise his curiosity and learns about many hidden crimes from those days.
All of this becomes not so academic after Claudia is murdered, and many new questions are presented. In the process of investigating Claudia's murder, Brunetti learns about new levels of deception and depravity that some employ to achieve their selfish ends.
I have read a number of novels that relate to those days in World War II in Italy, and I found this one to be one of the very best.
Enjoy!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio Cassette
I should have known better but had no choice: there isn't an unabridged version of the Brunetti books on CD, and it's too bad: the charm of Venice-the interactions of the Brunetti family, and the quirks of Brunetti's fellow Questura employees is all lost to this stripped down version of Donna Leon's books. We love to listen to audio versions of books on long trips, and this was a disappointment (we read the series with something close to rapture!) Sorry, but if the story has to be stripped down so much it probably shouldn't be done at all. Kudos, though, to the narrator: he is a very talented guy...
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Wilful Behaviour
I recently took a short break in Italy so took two Donna Leon 'Brunetti' books with me on my Kindle. This was the better of the two, I thought. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Nora Walters
"THE POLITICS OF AMNESIA"
Student Claudia, precocious and determined, wants corrected an alleged wartime miscarriage of justice. Soon she is murdered. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. D. L. Rees
A little disappointment that cannot eclipse familiar pleasures
"At the end of the long calle, he turned right in front of the church, then down into an ever narrower calle until he found himself at the immense portone of Palazzo Falier. Read more
Published 6 months ago by G. M. Sinstadt
The Usual high Quality
Donna Leon is one of my favourite writers. In the Brunetti novels she combines the advantages of being an insider (twenty five years in Italy) and an (American) outsider, giving a... Read more
Published 6 months ago by W. Tegner
Theme: Italian failure to deal with Mussolini and their past
The 11th Commissario Brunetti is a classic whodunit story. It starts out with Paola Brunetti's student Claudia Leonardo asking both Brunettis, if her deceased grandfather, tried... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Luthien Arnatuile
another Venitian mystery
Donna Leon has again delighted the reader with her descriptions of Venice and the lives of some of the citizens. Read more
Published 13 months ago by J. Stewart
Book review
I loved it. It also deals with so many issues in the current and past fabric of Venecian and Italian society.
Published on 8 Jan 2010 by F. Zarkesh
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