-
Your next favorite book
is waiting.
A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries, 33)
by Donna Leon
In the thirty-third installment of Donna Leon's magnificent series, Commissario Guido Brunetti confronts a present-day Venetian menace and the ghosts of a heroism that never was.
Around one AM on an early spring morning, two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice's squares. Commissario Claudia Griffoni, on duty that night, perhaps ill-advisedly walks the last of the boys home because his father, Dario Monforte, failed to pick him up at the Questura. Coincidentally, Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy friend of Vice-Questore Patta to vet Monforte for a job, triggering Brunetti's memory that twenty years earlier Monforte had been publicly celebrated as the hero of a devastating bombing of the Italian military compound in Iraq. Yet Monforte had never been awarded a medal either by the Carabinieri, his service branch, or by the Italian government.
That seeming contradiction, and the brutal attack on one of Brunetti's colleagues, Enzo Bocchese, by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti's attentions. Surprisingly empowered by Patta, supported by Signorina Elettra's extraordinary research abilities and by his wife, Paola's, empathy, Brunetti, with Griffoni, gradually discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte's past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.
A Refiner's Fire is Donna Leon at her very best: an elegant, sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become richer with each book, and who constantly explores the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.
"Showcas[es] the emotional depth and intellectual acumen of Commissario Guido Brunetti ... With the understated elegance and empathy imbued throughout this internationally acclaimed series, Leon once again examines the confluence of solid police work with issues of redemption and social justice." —Booklist
"As usual in Leon's books, the mystery plays second fiddle to the characters and relationships from whom hints of secret misbehavior gradually coalesce into revelations as sordid and violent as you could wish. Is all this really 'the stuff of television drama,' as Brunetti fears? Only of a very high order indeed." —Kirkus Reviews
This information about A Refiner's Fire was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Donna Leon, born in New Jersey in 1942, has worked as a travel guide in Rome and as a copywriter in London. She taught literature in universities in Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia. Commissario Brunetti made her books world-famous. Donna Leon lived in Italy for many years, and although she now lives in Switzerland, she often visits Venice.
If you liked A Refiner's Fire, try these:
It is among the commonplaces of education that we often first cut off the living root and then try to replace its ...
Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!
Can you name the title?
Test your book knowledge with our daily trivia challenge!
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
