Why a Booktrail?
1990s – This time Donna Leon takes us to a small village at the foot of the Italian Dolomites
A Noble Radiance (Brunetti 7)
What you need to know before your trail
In a small village at the foot of the Italian Dolomites, the gardens of a deserted farmhouse have lain untouched and undisturbed for decades.
However now the new landowner is keen to start on the renovations.
Work starts but when his workmen disturb a macabre grave, the police are called. What they find is gruesome beyond belief since wild animals have done their worst to the already decomposed body.
There doesn’t look to be any clues as the victims’s ID but then a signet ring is found.
Which leads Commissario Guido Brunetti right to the heart of aristocratic Venice, to a family still grieving for its abducted son …
Travel Guide
“There was nothing much to notice about the field, a hundred-metre square of dry grass below a small village in the foothills of the Dolomites.”
Well not strictly true since this is the opening crime scene but its innocent appearance is all that can be seen until the renovations take place and the gristly find is made.
A secret quite literally buried for years is finally revealed when the body is found to be the son of the Lorenzonis, one of Italy’s most aristocratic families, whose son has been missing for several years.
When the Contessa finds out that the remains are those of Robert – we can see her clearly:
“She sat in the same chair, but now she gave the impression that the chair was in the process of devouring her, so little of her body seemed to remain within its enveloping wings”.
The house where the body is found and the ring have a great deal of significance and the story takes us back to Venice’s Jews during the Second world war. An interesting view on the role Italy and its nobility may or may not have played at the time.
As always the judgements on Italian justice are not far away –
“To many it seems that , during the time when the police are not labouring to bring criminals before their appointed judges, they are arresting or investigating those same judges”.
Booktrail Boarding Pass Information:
Web: donnaleon.net
Back to ResultsWhere Next?
