Uniform Justice
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4.2 • 29 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
'Complex and thought-provoking and lingers in the mind' Sunday Times
Neither Commissario Brunetti nor his wife Paola have ever had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, so when a young cadet is found hanged, at Venice's elite military academy, Brunetti's emotions are complex: pity and sorrow at the death of a boy close in age to his own son, and contempt and irritation for the arrogance and high-handedness of the boy's teachers and fellow students.
The young man is the son of an ex-politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. But as Brunetti - and the indispensable Signorina Elettra - investigate further, no one seems willing to talk. Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence?
'Silken prose and considerable charm . . . an unlovely story set in the loveliest of cities' Washington Post
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this superb novel, Leon's latest in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series (A Noble Radiance, etc.), the Venetian police detective and family man is summoned to the exclusive San Martino Military Academy, where Cadet Ernesto Moro has been found dead, hanging in the lavatory. The other cadets and the academy brass give a chilly reception to any "civilians" who trespass into their midst, including the Venetian police. Believing Cadet Moro was the victim of homicide rather than suicide, Brunetti traces a sinister trail that leads to the dead boy's father, a doctor-turned-politician who once revealed then ducked the ramifications of a military procurement scandal. This is not the Venice of Thomas Mann or Henry James the palazzos, gondoliers and Doges' monuments are all but overlooked. Leon's city is winter-cold and gray, with corruption rather than gilt glinting through the fog, and a culture in the grip of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that runs on secrets and bribes. Humane and intelligent, a good man working in an impossible system, Brunetti displays an acerbic, economical wisdom. The plot flows along like the Adriatic tide through a narrow canal swift, none-too-clean and inevitable. This is an outstanding book, deserving of the widest audience possible, a chance for American readers to again experience a master practitioner's art.
Customer Reviews
Sorrow in Venice
Like me you may feel that you know Venice after reading this book and you may know a little more about the human heart. A good police procedural with the worm of corruption at its core. Donna Leon can write and if like many writers she is a little in love with her hero at least one of her readers is a little in love with his wife