The Girl of His Dreams

#17 in the Commissario Brunetti series, set in Venice, Italy.

The story opens on the funeral of Brunetti’s mother, at last released from the madness of dementia. Giving the blessing at the graveside is an old boyhood acquaintance of Bruneti and his brother, Sergio, Padre Antonin Scallon. In the days after the funeral, runetti receives a visit from Padre Antonin at the Questura. Antonin has a request--that Brunetti look into the activities of a fringe preacher, a Brother Leonardo, who, Antonin fears, is running a religious scam to which a friend of Antonin’s seems vulnerable. In response, Bruntetti, Paola, Vionello and his wife Nadia, decide to investigate undercover.

While on this purely personal investigation, Brunetti and Vianello show more recover from the Grand Canal the body of a 10 year old girl who turns out to be one of the Rom, as the Gypsies are now to be called in the latest sensitivity edicts from the Italian government in general, and Patta in particular. The girl is in possession of what are clearly stolen goods. Brunetti and Vianello carry out the investigation, which seems straightforward, but the girl’s death haunts Brunetti.

This latest of her published books--#18 will be released in April--continues and strengthens a change in Leon’s writing that she seems to have started with the previous book, Suffer the Little Children. Up until that time, Leon wrote (with one glaring exception) outstanding but very straightforward police procedurals. Whether as part of the plot or the way she wove daily Venetian life into her stories, there were themes that always stood out, the most prominent of which was the omnipresent government corruption that penetrates every aspect of Venetian life. She almost always incorporated some theme of social justice into her plots as well.

In this book, even more than Suffer the Little Children, all that is practically nonexistent. The only theme she can say to bring out, and that briefly, is the Mafia, who were brought back into power by the US after World War II to counteract “international Communism,” in another move of monumental stupidity on the part of the US. But that makes just a brief appearance and is a sidelight.

In almost all of her books, the excomunitari--illegal immigrants--are present to some degree or another and even form the matrix of some of her plots. Here, the Rom and their culture are integral to the story.

There are two aspects to this book that are really striking. One is the frustration and despair that Brunetti and Vianello feel in trying to carry out their jobs decently. Given that Leon is writing realistically about Venice, that has always been an undercurrent, but in this book i is very pronounced. You wonder how Brunetti can continue.

The other aspect is that Leon, starting with her previous book and continuing very strongly in this one, has moved away from an easily classifiable genre--police procedural--into what is for her uncharted territory--a more ambiguous, much more subtle story in which she seems to be taking on more profound questions than her usual ones of corruption, environmental crimes, and the like. Now she seems to be trying to examine not just the impact on society but where Venetian society itself is heading. The result is far more of a literary endeavor than it is a crime story. Indeed, crime is the least important element in the book.

In one of her books, Brunetti, an atheist, reflects that while he does not agree at all with the Catholic Church and dislikes the power it wields, he is afraid of what would replace it should Christianity just simply die out. Since I have had exactly the same reaction, it struck me strongly at the time; I was reminded of that brief segment while reading this book.

The Girl of His Dreams has all of the standard Leon strengths; in particular her wry sense of humor is back, which had been missing from some of her previous works. While Paola plays a part, she and the family are not so prominent in this book as in some others. Instead Vianello is given his biggest role; he has clearly become a friend and not just a highly valued colleague.

There really is no denouement to the story--but the end is perfect.

A major and ambitious striking out from the kind of story that won her international fame in the crime genre, this is a far more serious, more thought-provoking book. Highly recommended. show less

One of the features that run through all Donna Leon's Venetian crime novels featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti is Brunetti's (and presumably Leon's) somewhat jaundiced view of what justice looks like in modern Venice. In some cases this is because Brunetti's superiors are loathe to move against the gentry who have the protection of their name, scared to move against the Mafia or unwilling to accord civil rights to some underclass of (often immigrant) society. Brunetti is jarred by the contrast of the darkness of this society against the idyllic home life he leads and is frustrated at his inability to change things.

The Girl of His Dreams is no exception to this overall pattern with the gypsies ("these days we're meant to call them show more Rom") acting as the disenfranchised underclass this time around. It feels to me as if there's a lot less detective work and a lot more social commentary than there were in the early books of the series - it's a full hundred pages before a body is found and the main investigation begins and it feels as if there are still a number of loose ends when the book comes to an end. It also felt as if the difference between Brunetti's home life and the twilight world in which he operates was being so strongly contrasted that it made his family time seem impossibly perfect.

Despite these misgivings, I greatly enjoyed the book. The main reason for this is that Brunetti isn't really the main star of the story - the city of Venice is. Donna Leon is remarkably skilled at bringing the colour and vibrance of the city to life with a surprising economy of words. Few writers can evoke a location as vividly as she does Venice, and there are few better locations to inhabit, even if it's only for the duration of a short novel. show less

As this series goes along I've come to the conclusion that it's not the mysteries that draw me but the writing and the characters. Guido Brunetti with so much authority as the Commissario of Homicide is still sensitive and willing to be patient in trying to solve the murder. He wrests from each of the other characters exactly what he expects and somehow gets more.

In this story, Guido is at the scene as a young girl's body is retrieved from the canal and he works diligently to find out why she was there and why she died. When it is discovered that she is a gypsy he must contact her band of relatives and somehow get them to trust him enough to solve the mystery.

Yes, the mystery wasn't that involved, but the characters are so well crafted. show more Ms Leon is not afraid to show the corruption of the government. show less

Brunetti’s mother’s funeral reunites the Commissario with his older brother’s school friend, now a Franciscan priest. Brunetti is surprised when the priest shows up at the questura to ask for Brunetti’s help in investigating a religious sect that he suspects is attempting to defraud a friend’s son. Midway through the book, Brunetti and Vianello pull the body of a child out of the canal. They eventually learn that the child is a Rom. How did the girl end up in the canal? Was it an accidental fall, or was she pushed?

I missed the dynamics of Brunetti’s family life in the previous book in the series, so I was glad that his home life is at the center of this book. It seems to be at the expense of a mystery plot, though. Leon show more devotes several chapters to the religious sect, then she inexplicably drops that plot for the investigation into the death of the gypsy child. It was almost like reading two different books. show less

The body of a girl found drowned in a canal leads Brunetti to a Roma camp, one of many in Italy where people from eastern Europe have settles as refugees. He and Vianello have a hard time understanding a culture that sends children to steal, but that is how the young girl fell off a roof into the canal. Was she pushed?

Brunetti unwinds the case until he finds the likely sequence of events. In the meantime, he also discovers a so-called religious guru sucking contributions from gullible Venetians and renews acquaintance with a classmate of his brother who spent 20 years as a missionary to the Congo.

What surprised me the most in this novel was the occasional moodiness of Signorina Elletra. I hope we don't lose her in subsequent installments.

Love that Brunetti is a happily married family man, and that his colleagues are supportive. Brunetti works 2 cases: one is the death of a Romani (gypsy) girl and the other involves learning what he can about a fringe religious group as requested by an acquaintance (whom he doesn't fully trust).

He pushes further than his commander would like but Brunetti knows how to manage (manipulate) his unimaginative and short-sighted boss. His actions resolve one case, and get him as close to the truth as possible in the other.

Strong read, good pacing and characterizations.

I'm not sure why the reviews of this book are so full of praise. Slow to start and with two unconnected story lines I found it very difficult to get involved or pay attention to this book in the Brunetti series. This time the social issue dealt with was gypsies so that was new. Patta remains two dimensional and Signora Elletra elusive. Vianello gets a few choice monologues but overall this book felt limp and tired.