So Shall You Reap

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He said that one of the anti-marchers …’ Vianello paused to consider that word, shook his head, and went on, ‘… came running at the people in the parade, holding his sign stuck out in front of him horizontally, and deliberately ploughed into them. He set it beside him, knelt again, and glanced more carefully at the remaining books, making a series of visceral judgements, adding the books to the bag without bothering to give them the opportunity to plead for their lives from the temporary safety of Paola’s desk. There’s a lot going on as both Edgar’s team and Emma and Sam investigate Bert’s death, at first in competition and then they combine forces. I have read the whole series, so perhaps the next one will appeal to me more, but I am most grateful to the author for all the work she has put into the series, it's largely very enjoyable. As Venice experiences a debilitating heatwave, Brunetti escapes the city to spend time with his family.

This is a gentle novel - an odd thing to say about crime fiction and also about Donna Leon, who has expressed anger in past stories about the failures of Italian politics and administration and about the tourism influx into her beloved Venice.Inspection of his small residence confirmed this as Brunetti did not find much more than a small statue of Buddha that he worshipped at and a number of novels, mostly crime fiction. In every book we get to know a different facet of this beautiful city I especially love the references to the local dialects which are languages in their own right.

But when the postmortem reveals that he was poisoned, suspicion falls on his wife, eccentric ex-Music Hall star Verity Malone. As always, it’s beautifully done and once more I experienced a pang of regret when I reached the story’s end and had to say farewell to these people and this place until (hopefully) the next book in the series is published. And as the story settles into the investigation of a recognisable crime, he gathers those police officers close to him (characters well known to regular readers) and, between coffees, they ruminate on possible motives and root around to discover information that might lead them to a suspect.It opens with Ispecttore Lorenzo Vianello and Guido engaging in tricky dance to rescue Alvisse, a police officer who had attended a gay protest.

On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill, the 17th Dalziel and Pascoe novel, a complex book, that begins with a transcript written by Betsy Allgood, then aged seven, telling what had happened in the little village of Dendale in Yorkshire before the valley was flooded to provide a reservoir. It was a pleasant Buddhist Sri Lankan, Inesh Kavinda, who was living in the garden shed of the Palazzo Zaffo Sri Leonie.

Now, Brunetti feels compelled to investigate, to set aside his holiday and discover what happened to the man who had recently become his friend. Out of a mixture of curiosity, pity and a willingness to fulfil the wishes of a loving grandmother, Brunetti reopens the case. El misterio sirve de excusa para echar un vistazo a la historia política reciente de Italia, desde una perspectiva más personal, mostrando el idealismo de la juventud y la naturaleza problemática inherente al mismo.

I also find the theatrical elements of this series fascinating and much prefer the fact that they are written in the past tense.Initially it’s thought to be another victim of the killer, who had dumped his victims’ bodies in waterways around the city. A uniformed policeman entered and made a semi-salute towards Danieli, then stood aside to allow the man behind him to enter. Things soon take a more serious turn when a hand is seen in a canal and the body of an undocumented worker is soon found.