When Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti is called to investigate a presumed suicide in Venice's elite military academy, his inquiries are immediately met with a wall of silence. The young man is the son of a doctor and former politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. Dr. Moro seems devastated by his son's death; but while both he and his apparently estranged wife seem convinced that the boy would not have committed suicide, neither appears eager to talk to the police or to involve Brunetti in any kind of investigation into their son's death. Is the silence that confronts Brunetti the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is he facing a conspiracy far greater than this one death?
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The boy's parents are separated, and Brunetti learns that his mother was the victim of a shooting some years ago. Further, the boy's sister has disappeared. At the military school, Brunetti encounters a polite wall of silence, but that's nothing new for him, and this resourceful Italian copper thrives on unsolvable crimes. This time, however, the complex mystery he encounters lends itself to no easy solution. The heady brew here yokes in high-level corruption involving Italian army procurement and the allegation of transgressive sexual practices.
As ever, Leon juggles these elements with consummate skill, and it's a given that the Venetian setting is as impeccably conjured as ever. The treatment of Brunetti is fresh, too: the frustration and intransigence he struggles with are particularly counterpointed by his identification with the case--Brunetti has a son of the same age as the dead boy. But what's notably pleasing here is Donna Leon's refusal to tie everything up in a too-neat and orderly fashion. Its messy compromises are much more like real life than the contrivances of most crime novels. --Barry Forshaw
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