Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery [Hardcover]

Donna Leon (Author)

Book Description

Series: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery | Publication Date: March 3, 2004

Donna Leon's riveting new novel, Doctored Evidence, follows Commissario Guido Brunetti down the winding streets of contemporary Venice as he throws open the doors of a case his superiors would rather leave closed. When a miserly spinster is found brutally murdered in her Venice apartment, police immediately suspect her Romanian housekeeper. They are certain their job is done after the immigrant dies while fleeing arrest, but weeks later; a neighbor comes forward to defend the innocence of the accused. The only investigator who believes the alibi is Brunetti, who will have to go behind the backs of his superiors to vindicate the Romanian and find her employer's actual killer. As always, the indispensable hacking skills of the ever-loyal Signorina Elettra are the perfect complement to Brunetti's meticulous detective work. She discovers mysterious deposits in the old woman's bank account, but who made them? As Brunetti investigates, his wife, at home, reads him teachings on the Seven Deadly Sins. In a modern world of intrigue and nebulous morality, how do they relate to the murder at hand? Doctored Evidence is charged with suspense and evokes a contemporary Venice with Donna Leon's masterful flair.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

While a bit too slow to rank among her best, Leon's 13th atmospheric Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (after 2003's Uniform Justice) still offers many pleasures, including a clever puzzle. When greedy, curmudgeonly Maria Grazia Battestini is murdered, the Venetian police suspect her Romanian housekeeper, whom they shoot when she tries to evade questioning. The case seems closed until a neighbor returns from a trip, claiming the housekeeper's innocence. Hardworking, cynical Brunetti, devoted to his family, succulent meals and justice, an honest man in a corrupt police department, takes over the case. He finds that Battestini's several bank accounts were transferred out of Italy upon her death, the source of the money unknown. Brunetti suspects that her lawyer, Roberta Marieschi, and niece, Graziella Simionato, who shared power of attorney, were in cahoots and that the money came from blackmail. After several false leads and assiduous attention to detail, Brunetti discovers the key to the crime—pride, rather than greed, with the title a pun on the motive—meanwhile one-upping his workplace enemy, the ambitious, careless Lieutenant Scarpa. Leon evokes the real Venice, not the place of romantic novels or glitzy travel guides but the gritty, inbred city of dishonest politicians and hamlet-like neighborhoods filled with gossip.
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From Booklist

Leon's devoted American fans endured a seven-year wait before Uniform Justice and Noble Radiance landed on our shores last year. Hardly any waiting this time, as Guido Brunetti makes a quick reappearance, once again embroiled in a case whose moral ambiguities weigh heavily on the beleaguered but warm-hearted Venice cop. An extremely unpleasant elderly woman, the scourge of her neighborhood, has been savagely murdered, and her Romanian housekeeper, herself killed while running from the police, has been tagged as the obvious perp. The facts don't add up, however, and Brunetti, over his superiors' objections, won't close the case. A familiar crime-fiction premise, to be sure, but Leon, as always, looks for nuance behind the formula. She finds it in the victim's relatives, all severely flawed figures but all sharing a bedrock humanity that resists caricature, and, of course, she finds it in Brunetti's lovingly detailed but never sentimentalized family life--always the greatest source of pleasure in a series that reminds us again and again just what "character-driven" really means. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (March 3, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871139189
• ISBN-13: 978-0871139184
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #616,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A New Yorker of Irish/Spanish descent, Donna Leon first went to Italy in 1965, returning regularly over the next decade or so while pursuing a career as an academic in the States and then later in Iran, China and finally Saudi Arabia. Leon has received both the CWA Macallon Silver Dagger for Fiction and the German Corrine Prize for her novels featuring Commisario Guido Brunetti. She lives in Venice.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another delightful Brunetti experience, March 16, 2004

By 

RachelWalker "RachelW" (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

Last year, the publication of US ex-pat Donna Leon's Uniform Justice - about a murder in an Italian military academy - marked her much-lauded return to the American stage after 7 years. (They ceased to be published originally because she believed the way her publishers were marketing her books was "vulgar".) The rest of the world over, she has been a regular feature on the bestseller lists, and determined American fans have only been able to acquire foreign copies. Thankfully, that is now slowly changing. Why thankfully? Because her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in her adopted home-city of Venice, is one of the most enjoyable currently being produced. It is a huge big sparkling gem in the crown of crime fiction - it is a treasure trove of pure enjoyment.

Doctored Evidence is the 13th in the award-winning series, and just as good as all the rest. An unpleasant old-woman is found murdered in her apartment by her doctor. She was not liked. Treating her maids no better than slaves, and keeping her television on loud almost every night are just two of the behaviours which alienate her from her neighbours. Suspicion immediately falls on her Romanian maid, who is missing and heading back to her country. As the police catch up with her at a train station on the border, she flees in desperation, and is killed as she runs across the tracks into the path of a train.

Finding a large amount of money on her person, they believe they've found their woman. That is, until one of the victim's neighbours returns from a business trip in London, with strong evidence to suggest that she was not the killer. The investigating officer dismisses her, passing her off to Brunetti, who starts to investigate the case unofficially, and uncovers a mystery far more complex than the one they all suspected.

The fact that Leon writes these novels purely for pleasure (she has said that she would far rather attend the opera if it came to a choice) and not for fame or money (uncomfortable with any kind of "celebrity", she refuses to allow them to be published in Italy) really shines through this marvellous series. It is infused with something marvellous. This is crime fiction for the sake of it. It is pure and it is wonderful.

That's not to say it isn't serious, either, because it is. Donna Leon does for Venice what Ruth Rendell does for Britain and Michael Connelly for L.A. Like many great crime writers, Leon uses her fiction as a way of highlighting things about the world - in this case specifically Venice - which concern her. Indeed, often they expose a level of corruption which Signor Berlusconi would not be at all pleased about! Doctored Evidence focuses perhaps less on general civic corruption - although Leon can't resist throwing hints of it into the mix - and more on a kind of personal corruption, while still managing to write as piercingly and fascinatingly about the society of Venice as ever. She is in the fortunate position of an outsider able to look at a society from the inside, and she utilises that advantage brilliantly for her portrait of the city. These novels are practically drenched in culture, and their protagonist is wonderfully refreshing: he is not hard or gritty, nor particularly flawed or jaded; he is just a normal Italian, a very moral man who wrestles every day with justice and its ambiguities. Plus, his wife is wonderful! The plots are refreshing, too, in the way of much European fiction: they are much less formulaic than some American or British fiction. Leon's mysteries are predictable only in their excellence. Doctored Evidence is a wonderful novel, a pure, sublime joy that no reader should allow to pass by.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Doctored Evidence' needs no second opinion!, April 14, 2004

By 

Billy J. Hobbs "Bill Hobbs" (Tyler, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

It's more than a "lucky 13" for Donna Leon. "Doctored Evidence" is a carefully-crafted, purposefully-written, and fully-fulfilling (typical!) Leon police procedural featuring my favorite Italian, Commissario Guido Brunetti.

The erstwhile policeman has been on holiday to Ireland when the death occurs (A Romanian cleaning woman supposedly murdered her employer and made off with a large sum of money, only to be apprehended at a border crossing; before police can take her into custody, she bolts and is killed by an on-coming train)and when he returns he has already dismissed the case, which he'd read about in the papers, as merely a "cut and dried" episode in the life of the police in Venice.

Of course, the death of the cleaning woman has suspicious and unusual circumstances and shortly after Brunetti returns to work, a neighbor of the dead woman reports to the police that she has proof that the woman is innocent. This, of course, really peaks Brunetti's interest and from that point on, Donna Leon is, well, Donna Leon.

Before the case is closed, of course, readers once again witness the inter-play between Brunetti and his associates, his family, and his beloved Venice. Leon is not shy about taking literary pot shots at a number of socially significant issues facing not only the Venezians, the Italians, but the rest of the world.

Step by step, Leon takes us to the conclusion, where, of course it's no secret, Brunetti's intellect, talent, and good will once more triumph.

"Doctored Evidence" continues the Leon reputation. What a fascinating series Leon has created. Tis a pity one has to wait a year for the next episode.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Death in Venice' becomes a Donna Leon cliche, April 21, 2004

By 

Mindy Robertson (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

For all her "baker's dozen" Guido Brunetti books, Donna Leon continues to amaze this reader with her ability to sustain a police procedural so competently, so willingly, and so fantastically.

It's Venice once again and the good Commissario finds himself lured into what appears to be a routine case: a "foreigner" has been apprehended for murder and theft and before the police can secure her, she bolts and is run over by an oncoming train. A simple case. Case closed.

Ah, but here is where Brunetti comes in. Certain suspicious elements emerge and within a few minutes, he's completely immersed into the whole scene.

Along the way, Donna Leon incorporates several socially significant issues (as she always does) that serve only to enhance the plot outline. Her critique on Venezian politics and life in general in that Pearl of the Adriatic stand on their own merit.

Once again, Leon's brilliance at creating memorable characters make this just routine for her: but for her readers, each volume is a true adventure in itself.