Death by Publication: A Mystery

This reader was deeply shocked with disturbed breathing and emotional distress. While the issue needs to be discussed there is no need to produce detail drawing the reader into the 'experience. Leon continues to write so well that the story seems to flow spontaneously from some cosmic source of all stories. I gave the book the rating not because it was fun to read, but because it deals fairly with gritty, ugly reality. It does not preach. There is an element of journalism here. She quotes facts and numbers of human trafficking, but always as Brunetti's doing his job and doing it well.

With help from Signorina Elettra and friends. The thing that sets Leon as an author and the series apart from average fiction is her characters and their ways of living with the results of an increasingly corrupt and inhumane society. I questioned the use of "Judgment" in the title because characters never encounter the judicial branch.

In this book, judgment is handed down surely, swiftly, and fatally.

It is the concept of justice that is questionable here. Though she has lived in Venice for more than a quarter-century, Donna Leon has insisted that the Commissario Brunetti series of detective novels she sets in Venice not be translated from English into Italian. All, or what seemed like all, of the major political figures who had ruled the country since Brunetti was a child had been named in accusation, named again on different charges, and had even begun to name one another, and yet not one of them had been tried and sentenced, though the coffers of the state had been sucked dry.

It was the only time a patient ran no risk. A typical admonition from Patta runs along these lines: Why bother to put the boy who broke into a house in jail when the man who stole billions from the health system is named ambassador to the country to which he had been sending the money for years? By the government, the church, the political parties, by industry and business and the military. Like many of her contemporaries, Donna Leon demonstrates a mastery of sociology as well as skill in crafting a suspenseful novel.

This fourth book in the Brunetti series is somewhat darker than the first three: Venice is more corrupt and lawless while Guido, himself, is less admirable as he lies to those he questions, involves his year-old daughter in spying for him, and uses illegal means to obtain phone information he needs. The book leaves one with a bad taste in the mouth.

There are a few pages that describe violence and are disturbing. Coincidence plays too large a role -- as in the video that happens to be given to Chiara, the truck accident Paola just happens to recall, and the fact that Pata's secretary's sister, a doctor, just happens to have treated the murdered man's wife and daughter.

PLUS A QUICK PEEK AT THE 2ND HALF OF 2018…

When Brunetti needs information, he just happens to have acquaintances in foreign countries or locally who owe him favors and happen to provide just the information he needs as he puts the puzzle of the three murders together. The killer's motive ultimately doesn't make sense and isn't credible. The book held my interest and was very absorbing until the unsatisfying end.

The reader is left with a helpless feeling that corruption triumphs and the little man is tilting at windmills to try to stop it in even a single instance. The rich and powerful always come out ahead. An early but intriguing story by Donna Leon that bares the issues of human trafficking and prostitution and through the story shares how those who are involves slowly lose their humanity A successful lawyer gets on train to return home and toward the end of the journey is found shot to death; another, supposedly committed suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning; and a third, again, shot to death.

Commissary Brunetti knows in his gut that they are related and slowly builds up the threads connecting each man to the other and to a secret undertaking with attachments across countries and from the highest levels of Italian government. Before it is over, Brunetti and his family will have seen the cost and the perniciousness of such crimes.

Write a customer review. Showing of 7 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Will Sue Grafton's Z Is for Zero Ever Be Published?

Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. This is a book you literally can not put down. I started reading it and was so captivated that I read nonstop to the end. Everything is brought to vivid life: Not at all what I expected Read it and be surprised.

Sue Grafton

I know I was. One person found this helpful. This novel will keep you thinking.

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The characters are regular people, with their own lifes, feelings and passions. The plot is just very good and he does not use any tricks to captivate you. Is a book to enjoy for a couple of hours and think about it for a long time. Jean-Jacques Fiechter goes deep into the Psychology of Revenge. It is fascinating to see how the Characters take Shape and Volume as the Plot evolves. A Movie has been made, based on this Book, but the Book is a lot better.

The author uses brilliant irony and jolting powers of description to make a darkly funny masterpiece. I read this mystery in two hours. You are taken places you have never been, the prose is perfect, the story grips you. A reason to bid the video store farewell! See all 7 reviews. Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. His latest follows a man caught between two worlds, feeling at home in neither, as he grows up and leaves his kindly adoptive parents to pursue a life in boxing.

Jonathan Abrams, All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire.

Editorial Reviews

Abrams is a master of the oral history, and this time he has his sights set on that most pivotal of crime-pop culture moments: Going in deep with the creators, cast, crew, and all the flies on the wall, Abrams expands our view of what the show meant and offers up every choice tidbit you ever wanted.

A bright young thing with a haunted past goes to join her college pal in Algiers, causing chaos and uncertainty for her friend and her new husband. Gordon McAlpine, Holmes Untangled. Chris Bohjalian, The Flight Attendant. And yet their appearances in the canon are few and far between. Alice Feeney, Sometimes I Lie.

There are three things you should know about me. Narrating both from her hospital bed and from a week before her accident, Reynolds tries to piece together what happened to her. Lansdale has one of the unique and entertaining voices in modern literature and the banter between Hap and Leonard never disappoints. Brad Meltzer, The Escape Artist. Donna Leon, The Temptation of Forgiveness.

Her version of Venice, thoroughly investigated by her Commissario Guido Brunetti, is awash with intrigue, elegance, scholarship and several grisly crimes. Anya Yurchyshyn, My Dead Parents. Naomi Hirahara, Hiroshima Boy. Hirahara finishes up her Mas Arai series with Hiroshima Boy , the seventh to feature the gardner-turned-inspector. Richard Flanagan, First Person. Flanagan interrogates what makes a con man and what makes an honest one in this study of two men thrown into a not quite symbiotic relationship. For decades now, Downing has been writing some of the best, most nuanced historical thrillers around.

The latest in his McColl series, which is set during WWI, takes readers to Moscow during the Bolshevik ascendancy, as the country smolders. Expect intrigue and historical detail galore; nobody fills out the lush everyday particulars quite like Downing. Roxane Gay, Not That Bad: Dispatches From Rape Culture. Roxane Gay has assembled this anthology from an incredible roster of contributors, each essay layering another set of thoughts, ideas, and experience onto a collection that explores how rape culture can permeate every facet of our lives. Philip Kerr, Greeks Bearing Gifts.

The new vocation sends him to Athens, where fraud, politics, and the antiquities trade dominate the hotel bar scene, and Gunther finds himself at the center of yet another murder investigation that implicates Germans and the long shadow their crimes still cast over Europe. Michel Bussi, Time Is a Killer. Former magic prodigy Natalie Webb, now hard up and in need of a gig, explores the world of underground poker games, only to put her skills to use on the con to end all cons. Looking for your next high-octane, jet-setting, ass-kicking, female-driven thriller?

Then look no further, because K. Klester Cavalcanti, The Name of Death. Abir Mukherjee, A Necessary Evil. Julia Heaberlin, Paper Ghosts. Fuminori Nakamura, Cult X.