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The Girl of His Dreams (A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery)
 
 
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The Girl of His Dreams (A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery) [Hardcover]

Donna Leon (Author)
3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)


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Book Description

May 13, 2008 A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries have won legions of fans for their evocative portraits of Venetian life. In her novels, food, family, art, history, and local politics play as central a role as an unsolved crime. In The Girl of His Dreams when a friend of Brunetti’s brother, a priest recently returned from years of missionary work, calls with a request, Brunetti suspects the man’s motives. A new, American-style Protestant sect has begun to meet in the city, and it’s possible the priest is merely apprehensive of the competition. But the preacher could also be fleecing his growing flock, so Brunetti and Paola, along with Inspector Vianello and his wife, go undercover.

But the investigation has to be put aside when, one cold and rainy morning, a body is found floating in a canal. It is a child, a gypsy girl. Brunetti suspects she fell off a nearby roof while fleeing an apartment she had robbed. He has to inform the distrustful parents, encamped on the mainland, and soon finds himself haunted by the crime--and the girl. Thought-provoking, eye-opening, and profoundly moving, The Girl of His Dreams is classic Donna Leon, a spectacular, heart-wrenching addition to the series.


Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best of the Month, May 2008: Reading The Girl of His Dreams leaves you no choice but to reconsider what makes a mystery novel so good. Certainly there's no denying the appeal of a hard-boiled crime story, where more often than not a brilliant yet battered P.I. drives you white-knuckled to the edge of your seat, but Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti--at once exactingly inquisitive and disarmingly sensitive--bucks that genre convention entirely. Here, in Leon's seventeenth Brunetti mystery, is a man who investigates the tragic drowning of a young Gypsy girl relentlessly, yet--in his thoughtful meanderings through the streets and cafes of Venice--also struggles to understand the human warps and weaknesses that make his beloved city so vulnerable. In the end, it's this pure love and curiosity for life (and, I admit, his lusty appreciation of daily luxuries like prosecco, good coffee, or a burst of sunshine) that make Brunetti such a seductive hero--so much so that you're willing to follow him wherever he goes. --Anne Bartholomew

From Booklist

*Starred Review* Leon’s latest Guido Brunetti novel begins and ends with funerals—the first for Brunetti’s mother and the second for an 11-year-old gypsy girl whose body washes up in Venice’s Grand Canal. As he launches what he knows will be a fruitless investigation of the girl’s death, Brunetti is assailed by the ironies of police work in contemporary Italy, where corruption is rampant and where his boss, Patta, king of the bureaucrats, prattles on about multicultural awareness while trying to protect the well-connected from any exposure in the matter of an insignificant gypsy’s death. But just as Brunetti is incensed by the way his peers ignore the marginalized members of society, so is he appalled by the callousness with which gypsy fathers groom their young children for lives of petty crime. More and more in Leon’s remarkably rich series, crimes have no solutions, and the problems of daily life yield no answers. And yet, as Brunetti reflects on his loss of the “capacity for instinctive trust,” we feel just that kind of trust in Brunetti himself, in the idea of a man overwhelmed by a malfunctioning society who soldiers on, doing what good work he can and finding solace in small moments of love and tranquility. It isn’t much, but in lives bookended by funerals and filled with frustrations, it’s what we have. This series becomes less about crime and more about daily life with each new entry, and as it evolves, it becomes clear that Leon deserves her place not only with the finest international crime writers (Michael Dibdin and Henning Mankell, for example) but also with literary novelists who explore the agonies of the everyday (Margaret Drabble and Anne Tyler, among others). --Bill Ott

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 272 pages
  • Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (May 13, 2008)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0871139804
  • ISBN-13: 978-0871139801
  • Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (54 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #502,494 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
102 of 108 people found the following review helpful
Viva Brunetti! April 30, 2008
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
As reader comments on Mr. Nicholas's review have already made clear, this is probably not the Donna Leon novel to start with if you're new to the series. Start at the beginning with "Death at La Fenice" and get to know Commissario Brunetti, his family, his co-workers and his beautiful, corrupt city of Venice. If you fall in love with all of them, as so many of us have come to do, then you'll probably want to read the rest in something close to chronological order if you can.

Here's the list, in order, updated in April 2012: "Death at La Fenice," "Death in a Strange Country" "Dressed for Death," "Death and Judgment," "Acqua Alta," "Quietly in Their Sleep," "A Noble Radiance, " "Fatal Remedies," "Friends in High Places," "A Sea of Troubles," "Willful Behavior," "Uniform Justice," "Doctored Evidence," "Blood from a Stone," "Through a Glass, Darkly," "Suffer the Little Children," "The Girl of His Dreams," "About Face," "A Question of Belief," "Drawing Conclusions" and "Beastly Things."

This 17th in the series is a real treat, as expected. And Leon's in top form, again as expected. The murder at the heart of it delves into the gypsy life of Venice; the secondary story deals with a priest who's trying to unmask a clergyman he suspects is a crook--clearly one of them's a bad guy, but which? And before it's all over with, the whole Brunetti family, their in-laws, the Vianellos and Signorina Elettra, will all have gotten involved.

Sidenote: Once upon a time, presumably for privacy reasons, Leon, an American who lives in Italy, would not let her novels be published in either country. Happily--starting with "Uniform Justice" in 2003--that changed, and one by one, but not in any particular order, the earlier Brunetti novels all eventually became available here..the 3rd, 4th and 6th under different titles. So if you ever come across "The Anonymous Venetian," "A Venetian Reckoning" or "The Death of Faith" please know these are not new Leons; they're just the British titles of "Dressed for Death," "Death and Judgment" and "Quietly in Their Sleep."
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By tregatt
Format:Hardcover
Once again Donna Leon delivers another graceful and thoughtful Commissario Brunnetti installment. Leon's style of writing and the way she develops the plot my not be everyone's cup of tea, and "The Girl Of His Dreams" may not rank amongst Leon's best work, but truly, I really enjoyed the book.

When a childhood friend of Brunetti's eldest brother, a priest, Padre Antonin, approaches Brunetti about his fears that a scam may being perpetrated, Brunetti is suspect about Antonin's motives. Always suspicious about the clergy and having some not very good memories of Antonin, Brunetti is tempted to let the matter drop with only the most superficial of investigations. But Brunetti's queries reveal that Antonin may be onto something afterall. It looks as if a brand new Christian sect has opened up shop in Venice, and several of the sect members have been persuaded to donate money to the sect. Is Mutti a scam artist as Anotonin claims? Or is Antonin afraid that Mutti may prove too much competition for the Church? But before Brunetti can go further with his queries, he becomes involved in another criminal investigation, this time involving the suspicious drowning of a young gypsy child. The young girl's death haunts Brunetti and his colleagues so much that Brunetti resolves to figure out how this child died and bringing whoever was responsible to justice...

It is true that Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti novels have changed a little over the years, becoming more introspective, quieter and less complex. But the books are still compelling and make for very enjoyable reading. It is true that there is very little suspense or tension, and I can understand the disappointment that some of the previous readers have had with "The Girls of His Dreams;" but really one also reads Donna Leon for the quiet lyricism she writes, the wonderfully evocative manner in which she describes Venice in all it's various seasons and for the regional political issues she informs us about -- it's my way of keeping in touch with what's going on in Italy on a social level other than through the media. "The Girl of His Dreams" was a very quiet, elegant and lyrical read, but it may not be to every reader's taste, esp given the ending, but I enjoyed it nevertheless. As other reviewers have already mentioned, "The Girl of His Dreams" may not rank as one Leon's most stellar of offerings, but for stalwart fans, it will prove to be an enjoyable and rewarding read.
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26 of 32 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Before writing my review, I waited two days after reading The Girl of His Dreams to see if I liked the book any better after sleeping on it. I didn't. Sorry, Ms. Leon. This one's a clunker. Why? Of two cases, only one is interesting. And the investigation of the interesting one isn't very stimulating. This book will only appeal to those who enjoy thinking about the injustices that victims experience.

As the book opens, crime seems to have taken a holiday in Venice and Commissario Guido Brunetti has plenty of time to investigate a mysterious preacher who is looking for big donations on the behalf of a priest he barely knows. Naturally, there's no crime to pin down, but Brunetti decides to look around anyway.

Before the preacher's background and motives can be understood, Brunetti has to deal with a most unpleasant duty . . . pulling a dead girl from the water. Here's where the local color comes in. The girl is a Gypsy (the P.C. term is Rom), part of a family that steals for a living. As you can imagine, Gypsies aren't interested in telling their troubles to the police.

How will Brunetti find out what happened to the girl? That's the real mystery of this book. A lot of the leads turn out to be misleading which provides a few mild surprises.

Once again, you'll learn that the police aren't able to do very much about crime, those in the establishment who complain often have things to hide, and the poor aren't as bad as everyone else thinks. The explication of those points is, however, not very interesting compared to other books in this series.

Did I need to read this book to remain a fan of this series? Not really. You have the option to pass on this one.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
See the films instead
As others have noted, this is not the place to begin reading Donna Leon. This story is so slow, so negative and so generally uninteresting that I can't recommend it. Read more
Published 1 month ago by TomThree
Leon never disappoints
Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates the death of an 11-year-old Gypsy girl whom he has pulled from a Venice canal. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Flora Bunda
Is it a mystery or does the author just want to educate about life of...
Totally discordant stories about a priest and then about a dead child. I am wondering what the mystery was? Read more
Published 9 months ago by Harinder S. Brar
Trust
Death is absence of consciousness Brunetti believes. This is its awfulness. His father had not gone to church, remaining silent on the issue of faith, and his mother had. Read more
Published 11 months ago by Mary E. Sibley
DISAPPOINTING
i had very high expectation for the book but it turned out to be a waste of time and money :( my first and last book for the author.
Published 21 months ago by Anonymous
Leon is Getting a Little Snippy
Since most of her fans know that Leon has been living in Italy for over twenty-five years, she seems to be getting more and more 'disgusted' with the way things work there. Read more
Published on May 20, 2010 by Grey Wolffe
The Girl of His Dreams
Commissario Guido Brunetti is called in when a young gipsy girl's body is found floating in the Grand Canal. Read more
Published on April 22, 2010 by Linda Umstead
Crime novel??!
No surprise that Donna Leon's novels aren't translated into Italian. Nobody would care reading them, in fact. Read more
Published on March 15, 2010 by Checchini Luna
How and why
Bravo, Donna Leon, for writing a mystery novel that delves into the underpinnings of crime and society. Read more
Published on February 4, 2010 by Linda Pagliuco
on automatic pilot
I very much enjoyed reading many of Donna's books but begining to think she has worn out Venice and needs to move to Rome,Florence,Naples,Milan etc
Published on December 14, 2009 by Hey you
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Inside This Book (learn more)
First Sentence:
Brunetti found that counting silently to four and then again and again allowed him to block out most other thoughts. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Signorina Elettra, Dottoressa Pitteri, Brother Leonardo, Padre Antonin, Giorgio Fornari, Leonardo Mutti, Lieutenant Scarpa, Piazzale Roma, Signora Vivarini, Signor Fornari, Signor Rocich, San Zaccaria, Grand Canal, Bogdan Rocich, Minister of the Interior, Antonin Scallon, Campo San Giacomo, Orsola Vivarini, Children of Jesus Christ, San Marco, All Brunetti, Palazzo Benzon, Tiger Man
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