The Golden Egg by Donna Leon

Mystery

What Goodreads says:

"In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Vice Questore Patta asks Brunetti to look into a minor shop-keeping violation committed by the mayor’s future daughter-in-law. Brunetti has no interest in helping his boss amass political favors, but he has little choice but to comply. Then Brunetti’s wife, Paola, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaner has just died of a sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing him, or helping him.

Brunetti begins to investigate the death and is surprised when he finds nothing on the man: no birth certificate, no passport, no driver’s license, no credit cards. As far as the Italian government is concerned, he never existed. Stranger still, the dead man’s mother refuses to speak to the police, and assures Brunetti that her son’s identification papers were stolen in a burglary. As secrets unravel, Brunetti suspects that the Lembos, an aristocratic family, might be somehow connected to the death. But why would anyone want this sweet, simple-minded man dead?"

The Golden Egg is the latest in the Commissario Guido Burnetti Mysteries.  If you are a fan of the series you will not be disappointed.  If this is your first time to read a Commissario Brunetti mystery you will be a new fan. 

The world of Brunetti:  The series is set in Venice and each book adds another layer to the world where Brunetti lives.  Donna Leon is a long time resident of the city and she brings it to vivid life.

Politics:  Like previous books there are many statements about how politics work in Italy.  According to the books politicians are not well-loved.

Characters:  The characters have been developed over the series.  Both the main and side characters are well-deveolped.  There are added dimensions for several characters in each book.  I learned more about some of the side characters in The Golden Egg. Look for how Italians from the North and South of Italy feel about each other.

Plot:  The plot in The Golden Egg develops as the story progresses.  This story has a flow and rhythm where one action leads to another unexpected piece of information that leads to another and another.  It is not until the last chapter that the entire plot is revealed.  Even here it is not with a bang.  It creeps up and surprises you.

The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries are some of my favorites.  While I have read the entire series I did not read it in order.  Each book can stand-alone.

Atlantic Monthly Press published The Golden Egg by Donna Leon in 2013.

Fatal Remedies a Commissario Guido Burnetti Mystery by Donna Leon

Mystery/Audio Book

Fatal Remedies is the 8^th book in the Commissario Guido Burnetti series but the first one I have seen.  Fatal Remedies does a very good job of standing alone.  Until I finished listening and looked Fatal Remedies up on Goodreads I had no idea there were so many previous books and when I went to the author’s web site I found that there are now 21 books in the series.  Now that I know I will be looking for some of the previous books and my poor TBR pile will continue to grow.

The characters in this series are great. Burnetti’s boss Vice-questore Patta is incompetent at best.  Sergente Vianello is a great sidekick.  For me one of the best characters in the books was Signorina Elettra, Patta’s secretary.  She is the glue that holds everything together.  A whiz at the computer she can find whatever information Burnetti needs.  She outmaneuvers Patta and does what ever she wants.  Paola, Burnetti's wife also play a significant part in the book.

The mystery arrives in several layers and kept my attention throughout the book.  It looked for awhile like the bad guy was going to get away with murder but that did not happen.  I loved the way Burnetti finally found a solution.

For me one of the best parts of the book was the way everything Venetian was included in the book.  I wanted to go visit after reading the book and saw on the author’s web site that there are walking tours of Burnetti’s Venice.

Donna Leon has lived in Venice for over 25 years and in Fatal Remedies she makes the city come alive.

Here is the Goodreads summary:

 In this eighth Donna Leon police procedural set in Venice, honest cop Brunetti finds himself, for once, bending the rules severely. His wife, Paola, has been arrested for vandalism and malicious damage. She has, of course, acted out of the highest of motives--the tourist agency whose windows she smashed specialises in trips for unaccompanied men to the Far East. But just how far is it legitimate to go when faced with something like sex tourism? And how can Brunetti pursue justice with his wife taking the law into her own hands?

This has all of Leon's regular cast of characters--Brunetti's indolent and corrupt superior Patta, only too pleased to use his zealous commissario as a scapegoat, and Paola's somewhat sinister father, Count Falier, one of the men who, for good and ill, run the city of Venice. As always, the plot switchbacks from crime to crime and issue to issue. Leon's endlessly superior capacity for leading her readers up a variety of garden paths has rarely been so clearly on display. Above all, it shows what has been one of the more attractive marriages in modern detective fiction under serious stress for the first time; these have always been detective stories that offered more rewards than those of crime and punishment and this one is no exception.

Sound Library produced the audio book of Fatal Remedies by Donna Leon in 2012.

David Colacci was the narrator of Fatal Remedies.