So Shall You Reap

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The Commissario starts out where he would rather be culling his crowded bookshelves than heading off to the mainland to retrieve one of their policemen, who’s somehow been caught up in a protest march that has turned violent. He looked past them, as though there were a projection of the first page of the Gazzettino flashing on the wall behind them. It leads Brunetti right to the heart of aristocratic Venice, to a family still grieving for its abducted son. Donna Leon is so insightful and has a keen window into the psyche of people - she understands motives, thoughts, and feelings. Brunetti harbours a certain resentment in respect of the incremental changes ongoing in this place, but isn’t that true of all of us as we reach a certain age?

In addition, after Professor Molin had a stroke, Kavinda served as a personal aide, helping the Professor get around Venice. The very first issue, which we experience in the first few pages, involves someone on Brunetti’s team and a secret that no one was aware of. A man she got convicted for the savage murder of a sex worker in Glasgow turned out to have been framed.The ending feels hurried and the events of the first chapter are never brought back to a satisfying conclusion.

Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence? There seems to be no motive for Kavinda's killing, accounts seem to bear out that he was a good man, although there are papers in his home that make no sense. On a cold night shortly before Christmas, an immigrant street vendor is killed in Venice’s Campo Santo Stefano. Married women were not allowed to drive panda cars, and were largely employed to make tea and do the paperwork. The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia.With the invaluable assistance of Signorina, Elettra, Vianello, and Griffoni, Guido is determined to see that justice is served. Even the celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death – but none so horrific and violent as that of world-famous conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, who was poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. The times we all lived through,’ Brunetti said, ‘when our gay friends had to lie and pretend, and – some of them – get married, even have families.

I was so confused that I went back about 20 pages and reread the story, trying to figure out what was happening. Now, Brunetti feels compelled to investigate, to set aside his holiday and discover what happened to the man who had recently become his friend. Guido patiently talks to the man’s employer and the neighbours, but he is still mystified as to why someone would want to kill him.But when one anonymous admirer inundates her with bouquets of yellow roses – on stage, in her dressing room and even inside her locked apartment – it becomes clear that this fan has become a potentially dangerous stalker. El misterio sirve de excusa para echar un vistazo a la historia política reciente de Italia, desde una perspectiva más personal, mostrando el idealismo de la juventud y la naturaleza problemática inherente al mismo.

Granted leave from the Questura, Brunetti is shipped off by his wife, Paola, to a villa owned by a wealthy relative on Sant’Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the Venetian laguna. A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabinieri Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. From the canals and palazzi of Venice to a gypsy encampment on the mainland, Brunetti struggles with institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.Brunetti soon realises why he remembers the dead man, and asks Signorina Elettra if she can help him find footage of a farmers’ protest the previous autumn. The Commissario's investigation makes important connections between the past and present, and eventually reveals a shocking motive for Kavinda's murder. Initially it’s thought to be another victim of the killer, who had dumped his victims’ bodies in waterways around the city. Brunetti was already walking towards the door, where he’d left his raincoat and umbrella that morning after coming come home from having a coffee and picking up the newspapers. Vianello interrupted here and asked, ‘Excuse me, Signore, could you tell me why you asked about that?