Trace Elements - Donna Leon

Written by Donna Leon
Read by David Colacc1
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: Guido Brunetti, Book 29
Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
Publisher: 2020 Recorded Books

A woman’s cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon’s haunting 29th Brunetti novel.
When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding.

“They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no”, Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently-deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him Brunetti softly promises he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. They discover that Fadalto worked in the field collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice’s water supply and that he had died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta’s obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti is bolstered once more by the remarkable research skills of Patta’s secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region. But justice in this case proves to be ambiguous, as Brunetti is reminded it can be when, seeking solace, he reads Aeschylus’s classic play The Eumenides.

As she has done so often through her memorable characters and storytelling skill, Donna Leon once again engages our sensibilities as to the differences between guilt and responsibility.

“As per usual in her latest novels Donna Leon uses her books to comment on social, political or, in this case, environmental matters. Also, there’s a subplot about pickpocket minors and the police inability to deal with them. Although a crime novel, the crime itself is secondary. In fact, it’s not even clear if a murder has been committed, becoming almost incidental, but the story is no less entertaining because of it. At the end, Brunetti is presented with a moral dilemma, and although the ending it’s not as satisfying as I would have like from the story point of view, it’s a faithful reflection of today’s world, as there are times when things don’t wrap up as neatly as we wish”….Goodreads