A book in the excellent Commissario Brunetti mystery series by Donna Leon, set in Venice, of course, with its concomitant corruption and intertwined connections. ( )

Familie: Commisario Brunetti, Guido, wird in einem Fall wieder auf das gebracht, was ihn eigentlich beschäftigt: Seine Familie.
Nicht Paola, Raffi oder Chiara. Auch nicht die Familie von Paola. Es ist er und es ist seine Familie; seine Mutter, die sanft und senil dement dahin vegetiert und sein Bruder, der so wie er selbst sich aus dem Leben seiner Mutter verabschiedet hat. Aber da ist ein Mensch, die sich um diese Mutter immer gekümmert hat: Schwester Imacolata.
Sie ist diejenige, die sich als Ordensschwester immer um Signora Brunetti gekümmert hat und aus Ehrlichkeit aus dem Orden austrat, weil sie Sumpf nur ertragen kann, wenn er nicht allzu verlogen ist.
Mein Tipp: Lesen und genießen

Quietly in Their Sleep is Donna Leon's sixth installment in her series featuring Venetian police Commissario Guido Brunetti. When Maria Testa, a nun who has recently left her order, comes to visit him with sketchy information about a few deaths at a nursing home, Brunetti is not sure what to make of it. The threads connecting the deaths is tenuous at best, but because Brunetti's mother is in a nursing home run by the same director, and because he had always liked and admired Ms. Testa when she was caring for his mother, he decides to look into the deaths. He visits the heirs of the deceased, the priest who was assigned to the nursing home, and the mother superior of the order that helped care for patients. Brunetti doesn't think there is much, if anything, going on, but then Maria Testa is hit by a car and is left in a coma. Brunetti doesn't believe in coincidences, so he posts a guard at her hospital room door and continues the investigation. As he does so, he learns that there are several people who may have profited from the deaths, including the Catholic church and the shady secret organization, Opus Dei. In a subplot, Brunetti's daughter Chiara is having problems with the priest who teaches religious education at her school. Brunetti and his wife Paola discover that this priest has a past.

Quietly in Their Sleep is not one of Leon's strongest books, but it is still a good book. As in most of the Brunetti series, the police investigation touches on cultural issues - here, religion. Because Brunetti and Paola are portrayed as fervently anti-religion, there is a bit less moral ambiguity in this book as there is in other Leon books. I also found Quietly in Their Sleep to be a bit slow-moving, especially after the excitement of the previous book, Acqua Alta. However, all-in-all this was a good read. ( )

6th in the Commisario Brunetti series set in Venice, Italy.

Maria Testa--the former Suor Immaculata who Brunetti recognizes as one of the aides in the nursing home in which his Alzheimer’s-afflicted mother resides--appears in his office one morning, deeply disturbed by what she feels is an unusual number of deaths in another nursing home to which she has been recently assigned. She does not have any real proof--just the instinctive conviction that some of these people should not have died. Also, she is troubled by what may have been inappropriate bequests in their wills by these now-dead individuals to the nursing home or the order of nuns to which she formerly belonged.

Brunetti, not convinced, decides to look into the matter, by contacting and interviewing the heirs in as bland and unassuming manner as possible so as not to seem to be accusing either the heirs or the Catholic Church of wrongdoing. In the meantime, religion and the Church seems to have invaded his personal life as well, since Chiara, his 14 year old daughter whose academic record is otherwise perfect, has brought home a less than satisfactory grade in religious education. Her brother Raffaele tells the family that it is the priest, Padre Luciano, who is the problem and suggests that the priest may hove behaved inappropriately with some of the young girls in the parish.

With these two links to the Catholic Church, Brunetti begins his investigation of Maria Testa’s worries, while Paola fulminates against the clergy.

The Death of Faith is the most character-driven book in the series. The book starts out slowly with the interviews of the heirs and probably could have been shortened. But in doing so, we would have lost Leon’s exquisite ability to portray Venetians and Venetian society. Even though it takes nearly half the book to really swing into the plot, the descriptions of the heirs are gems of literary portraiture. Also, Brunetti’s mother-in-law, the Contessa Falier, makes a rare solo appearance and surprises everyone, including Brunetti, with the kind of woman she truly is. It is masterful writing on Leon’s part; while it might have been more proper in a novel about Venetian society than in a police procedural, all these characters studies do contribute to the plot and are utterly absorbing in what they tell us about Venice today.

After this deceptively slow start, the plot moves quickly and becomes more complex. There is a satisfying amount of action, and the denouements--both of them--are very well done. But this is Italy and in particular Venice, which means that they are Italian solutions and resolutions, not American or British ones, that “things” happen at an angle, not straightforwardly. As such, they may not be entirely satisfying but they are utterly Italian.

Highly recommended. ( )

First published in GB under the title “Death of Faith “

A nun leaves her order and nursing home when she begins to suspect that some of the patients, those who have left their money to the home, are discreetly being murdered. She turns to Commissario Guido Brunetti for help and unwittingly leads him into an investigation of the powerful secretive church organization known as Opus Dei and the very public scandal caused by a local priest.

Donna Leon writes a fabulous Italian crime fiction mystery giving the reader an insight into what is believed to be the day to day live of a shrewd police detective. The main character in this story is brilliantly portrayed as a man with high morals that has love for food and family, hate for corruption and a deep distrust of the government. ( )