Uniform Justice [Paperback]

Donna Leon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 6, 2004

For more than a decade Donna Leon has been a bestseller in Europe with a series of mysteries featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. Always ready to bend the rules to solve a crime, Brunetti manages to maintain his integrity while maneuvering through a city rife with politics, corruption, and intrigue.

In Uniform Justice, a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice’s elite military academy. Brunetti’s sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than with finding the truth. The young man’s father is a doctor and former politician. He is a man of an impeccable integrity who inexplicably avoids talking to the police. As Brunetti pursues his inquiry, he is faced with a wall of silence. Is the military protecting its own? Or has Brunetti uncovered a conspiracy far more sinister than that of a single death?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this superb novel, Leon's latest in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series (A Noble Radiance, etc.), the Venetian police detective and family man is summoned to the exclusive San Martino Military Academy, where Cadet Ernesto Moro has been found dead, hanging in the lavatory. The other cadets and the academy brass give a chilly reception to any "civilians" who trespass into their midst, including the Venetian police. Believing Cadet Moro was the victim of homicide rather than suicide, Brunetti traces a sinister trail that leads to the dead boy's father, a doctor-turned-politician who once revealed then ducked the ramifications of a military procurement scandal. This is not the Venice of Thomas Mann or Henry James-the palazzos, gondoliers and Doges' monuments are all but overlooked. Leon's city is winter-cold and gray, with corruption rather than gilt glinting through the fog, and a culture in the grip of a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that runs on secrets and bribes. Humane and intelligent, a good man working in an impossible system, Brunetti displays an acerbic, economical wisdom. The plot flows along like the Adriatic tide through a narrow canal-swift, none-too-clean and inevitable. This is an outstanding book, deserving of the widest audience possible, a chance for American readers to again experience a master practitioner's art.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* American readers, having endured seven long years without a new Guido Brunetti novel, can now celebrate the return of Leon's world-weary Venetian commissario. Brunetti, like Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen, is beyond idealism; he swims freely in corrupt waters yet attempts to carve out a separate peace for himself in the way he does his work and lives his life. Both are challenged by his latest case, involving the apparent suicide of a cadet at a Venetian military academy. The boy's father, a reform-minded politician, knows his son didn't kill himself but refuses to talk. As Brunetti slogs through the usual mire of corruption and cover-up, he ponders "how long it would be possible to go back and forth between his professional world and his private world without introducing the contamination of the first to the second." It is that private world--Brunetti's family life--that drives this wonderfully warmhearted, tragicomic series. Brunetti's interactions with his wife say much in few words, as when he attempts to criticize her tolerant attitude by chiding, "Love before truth?" and she replies, "Love before everything, I'm afraid, Guido." Those two words, "I'm afraid," transform a potentially sentimental, even trite, exchange into a something very different: yes, love trumps justice, but living with that fact isn't all romance. It's high time this series earns the accolades in the U.S. it has been receiving in Europe for years. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (April 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0142004227
• ISBN-13: 978-0142004227
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #121,389 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

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Leon's latest is simply fantastic!, October 6, 2003

By 

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

This review is from: Uniform Justice: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

Donna Leon's twelfth Commissario Guido Brunetti novel does not begin with a bang; instead, it begins with an apparent suicide, a hanging.

For all intents and purposes, the death of a young cadet at an exclusive Venetian military
school certainly must be a suicide. However, with the intellect, cunning, skill, and savvy of Leon and
Brunetti, what begins with a "simple" death soon works its way into an ugly, complicated, and
frightening murder in Leon's latest "Uniform Justice."

The young teenager is the son of a prominent doctor and politician, termed "honest" by any
standard. The father's honesty serves as a fault, however, and soon causes him to resign from
parliament, particularly following his investigation of corruption in military procurement. The
"web of deceit" in such cases seems to spread just about everywhere. His "anti-military" stance
does not go over well, especially at his son's military school. Thus begins a series of cover-ups, lies,
and deception--the ranks of the involved quickly close.

Not for the first time does Brunetti face the
"old school" of Venice. His task is formidable, but with the help of his wife Paola, his secretary
Signorina Elettra, and a few members of the department, Brunetti methodically and brilliantly
brings the case to its conclusion.

Leon, for all the love she bears for Venice, where she's lived for a
number of years, continues to champion the cause of the just, the honest, the uncorrupt, the
innocent, all descriptives of just about any place but Venice. Still, politics and social injustices
aside, Leon continues to hold firmly her legion of fans with her inimitable style, plot designs, superb
characterizations, and general "good literature." "Uniform Justice" is not easily laid aside until it
is finished.

One of Leon's strong suits is that she does not pretend that, when the final pages are read,
the world is then tied up nicely in a pretty bow and everything is okay. Romanticism in literature is
not Donna Leon; realism is alive and well and these themes permeate her twelve Brunetti novels.
Perhaps this is another reason she is so popular. ([e-mail])

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Harsh reality, June 9, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Uniform Justice (Paperback)

A previous reviewer noted that this book might be unacceptable to American readers as it is "too European", ie., not enough of a happy ending. I consider this assessment a plus rather than a minus. Apparently we have become so accustomed to seeing everything as a half-hour sit-com (with time for commercials), that we can no longer deal with any situation that is not presented to us as a neatly tied up package. I am glad that author Leon has not bowed to this commercial pressure and has instead created a novel that reflects current, not TV reality. Also, I find it refreshing that the main character is a decent, thoughtful man who has a strong, loving bond with his wife and kids instead of the formulaic rogue cop/PI/ex-cop who drinks too much/recovered alcoholic and who is estranged from his kids & wife & or/ex-girlfriends and is too emotionally damaged to sustain his current/past marriages/relationships. It IS disheartening to see corruption prevail and criminals go unpunished (why don't people get this upset about Enron?). But, eventhough evil seems to prevail, there are people who still retain their integrity and do what they can, families still treat each other with affection and respect and, as Brunetti's wife, Paolo, says, "love trumps everything."

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Si! Si!, October 27, 2003

By 

Natalie Harwood (Oxford, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Uniform Justice: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Hardcover)

A mystery equal to if not better than Simenon's Inspector Maigret series, UNIFORM JUSTICE lives up to the author's well deserved reputation. Set in modern Venice, it is replete with translatable Italian (telefonino, Carabinieri, Signora, si), well rounded characters and a plot that moves, though a little slowly, with riveting intricacy.
Commissario Brunetti becomes involved with a young cadet's suicide and he finds himself up against a military obstinacy equal to Jack Nicholson's character in A FEW GOOD MEN. This mystery brings the reader into the Italian home, takes you to lunch (yum!) and lets you suffer the frustrations of a modern police officer in a very political world. I couldn't put it down.