Commissario Brunetti finds that a Venetian library of rare
books has suffered thefts. Some one has been slicing out
pages of maps and illustrations from each half-century old
book of travels. These are saleable separately and the
main suspect is an American man. Do we value a book BY ITS
COVER or as an investment?
The usual corruption seethes under the laguna waters. A
massive cruise ship may be damaging the ancient buildings,
but eight separate committees are looking into the tourist
trade and must agree on any decision. GPS systems have
been ordered for the police launch drivers - who don't want
them - but have failed to arrive. Brunetti and his friend
and co-worker Vianello sip white wine and munch light lunch
as they discuss the haughty patroness of the library, who
donated some of the damaged books. Everyone in Venice
knows or is connected to everyone else, and gossip never
gets forgotten. We learn that in Naples the library's own
director, now in prison, had stolen copiously from the
collection, altering the catalogue to hide his activities.
As with the rest of this series Brunetti does a great deal
of walking, talking and contemplating rather than chasing
robbers, so the appeal of this marvellous story is more for
a sense of location than as a police procedural. Spring in
Venice is scented with lilac, wisteria and lily of the
valley; women sit at canal side cafe tables with their faces
tilted up to the sun. Then a man believed to be a witness
to the latest rare book thefts is found dead. Was he a mere
onlooker, or a participant?
Donna Leon, the German author of this splendid series, now
comes across as feeling crushed by the weighty, unstoppable
momentum of Italian corruption. The casino here, she says,
is the only one in the world which loses money. Her
protagonist's formidable wealthy father-in-law is now
moving his money to northern Europe and America. Although
the Brunetti books do not deal with mobsters, just
individuals, the underlying atmosphere of distrust of the
law, of favours given and received, or money spent to
secure a desired illegal result, is all-pervasive in her
view of society.
BY ITS COVER looks simultaneously at the
advance of the computer age and the heritage preserved in
ancient manuscripts, pitting a weary hero against the
infinitely ingenious criminal mind.
Donna Leon’s critically acclaimed, internationally
bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has attracted
readers the world over with the beauty of its setting, the
humanity of its characters, and its fearlessness in
exploring politics, morality, and contemporary Italian
culture. In the pages of Leon’s novels, the beloved
conversations of the Brunetti family have drawn on topics of
art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel
in a way they never have been before.
One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic
call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library.
Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a
round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must
be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor
from a Kansas university. The only problem—the man fled the
library earlier that day, and after checking his
credentials, the American professor doesn’t exist.
As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And
when a seemingly harmless theologian, who had spent years
reading at the library turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti
must question his expectations about what makes a man
innocent, or guilty.
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