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19 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'A Noble Radiance' Createsa Glowing Reaction!, 27 Feb 1999
By A Customer
For Donna Leon's fans, Venice, the Most Serene Republic, is anything but serene! In yet another, the seventh sure-winner in her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Leon once again masterminds a plot, setting, and unforgettable characters in a must-read book. In "A Noble Radiance," Leon shows what a master she is in establishing a grappling narrative hook, an absorbing plot filled with dangerous curves, pitfalls, and landmines, and a theme that at once is contemporary and yet for all time. The novel begins with the discovery of a badly decomposed body in a lonely farmfield in the north of Italy, and, as her previous novels have it, Brunetti is given the case. Just as he suspects, the body belongs to a kidnapped young man, the noble heir to a considerable estate. It is Brunetti's responsibility to bring the news to the young man's family. Realist that he is, Brunetti is quick to find that, indeed, something is rotten in the land of the nobili, and from this point on, the reader is led--even carried--to the conclusion. The conclusion, however, appears a bit weak, albeit quite satisfying, I suppose, as Leon's endings usually have a way of being far more thought- provoking. Still, the book is well-worth the time spent--unfortunately, the time goes all too fast when reading Leon; one has the tendency to wish they would keep on going, as they are, indeed, so mesmerizing. She has created such memorable characters, most notably Brunetti, who has such a noble philosophy. It is almost as if he is a salmon without a stream, as his ideals, his honesty, his concept of right and wrong seem at odds with today's sense of morality, whether it be Italian politics or not. Leon's books are never ones to shy away from social issues and concerns and it is almost as if she is Cassandra weeping outside the gates of Ilium, begging for anyone to believe her as she touches on responsible concerns: the environment (especially), corruption (both political and social), and immorality in various forms. Unlike Cassandra, Leon will be believed, one hopes. The "Sunday Telegraph" describes "A Noble Radiance" as a book "with a backdrop of the city so vivid you can almost smell it." Indeed, and the smells are not always so desirable. Leon herself (always one with the apt literary allusion) quotes Mozart at the beginning: "The nobility has honesty painted in its eyes." We find this quite appropriate for the novel. She manages to evoke the landscape and atmosphere is a manner that lends strong support to her story line. Her growing flock of readers have come to expect this in each succeeding book. So far, she has not let them down. Like Caesar, her books have crossed the Rubicon with their social messages and readers should not let them go back!
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Lassitude, headache and general malaise, 19 Oct 2008
Through her redoubtable hero Commissario Brunetti, Donna Leon unwittingly makes an interesting observation about A Noble Radiance itself: "...what he'd already heard so often he was beginning to feel the same symptoms: lassitude, headache and general malaise".
She may not have intended it, but in this sentence she invites comparison with the plotting and exposition in this book, which is so ponderous and repetitive you'll be experiencing lassitude and general malaise - if you haven't vigorously tossed the book aside altogether - very quickly. Your patience, if you have not, will be scantily rewarded: before half way nothing much nothing happens other than the repeated establishment of the same plot outline. After half way little does, and what there is in the way of action is ill-paced, improbable and ridiculous.
And to solve the crime (or does he really care about the crime? Leon overtly ponders whether this is what really drives her hero, something a more skilled writer would have allowed her readers to do) we have our hero Brunetti, a modern and thoughtful detective who reads Cicero in idle moments, but whose commanding officer hates him for reasons of which we are not appraised (other than the dictats of the Police Procedural Idiom). Good grief.
I think Donna Leon aspires to literariness, but doesn't get within a banjo swing of a cow's behind of it in this reviewer's humble opinion.
There are writers who write movingly, intellectually and chillingly about Italy - Peter Robb, even Thomas Harris, in passages - but Leon manages to make it all sound humdrum, and in the end there's not much to differentiate this book from countless other gumshoe detective stories other than the attraction of exotic and literary italian intrigue. The fact that it fails at that task is more than faintly damning.
Olly Buxton
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Slow-Paced Mystery with a Solution That's Hard to Swallow, 20 Nov 2007
It's a shame that A Noble Radiance is cast as a mystery. Take the need to solve the mystery out, and this would be an above-average novel about contemporary families in Venice.
Ms. Leon takes a long time to set up the mystery. Then, she has the investigation proceed very slowly as well. That would be fine if the resolution was interesting, unexpected, and credible. But to me, the resolution was nonsense: It just didn't ring true.
With much of the story taking place outside of Venice, there's not as much of the local color as usual. The best parts of the story relate to Guido Brunetti's father-in-law warning him about Guido's marriage to Paola, eating Chira's first dinner she's cooked for the family, and exploring Signorina Elletra's seemingly contradictory morals about getting secret information and making public investments.
Here's the set-up: A house and garden have fallen into ruin because the heirs are squabbling until a German buys the place for a huge sum and starts fixing it up. While the garden is being tilled, a bone sticks up that turns out to be human. As the police dig around, they also find a ring with the crest of a noble Venetian family, the Lorenzoni family, best known in recent times for having sold out the location of Venice's Jews to the SS during World War II. The family's son had been kidnapped two years earlier, and he was never found. When the autopsy shows a bullet hole in the skull of a young man, Commissario Guido Brunetti looks for a dental match. Finding one, he now has reason to dig into the kidnapping, looking for murderers.
The Lorenzonis have taken on their lost son's cousin as their heir. Was he involved? Why else had a motive?
As you finish this book, think about what the purpose of a family should be.
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