Book Review

By Derryll White

Leon, Donna (1994). Dressed for Death.

This is Donna Leon at her very best, exploring her pearl of the Adriatic, Venice, as no one else can. Anyone buying a Lonely Planet guide for Venice and environs should also purchase a couple of Donna Leon’s Commisario Guido Brunetti mysteries.

‘Dressed for Death’ is an interesting departure from much of Leon’s previous work. She reports on the AIDS invasion of Italy, condemning the comfortable, fat professional and business men who bring it home to their unsuspecting wives. She also looks with clear eyes at the state of Italy’s graft and deceit. She describes a culture devoted to cheating the government, to breaking rules and regulations in every imaginable way.

Through the whole of ‘Dressed for Death’ Donna Leon maintains a dialogue addressing just what exactly a man is. Many characters address it in a variety of ways. It becomes clear to the reader that Commisario Brunetti, even with his failings, comes closest to a definitive model of man. I found this quite intriguing and, after some thought, could not fault Leon’s conclusions.

This was an enjoyable read and a decidedly educational one. Perhaps that is just the best of both worlds.

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Excerpts from the novel:

THE OTHER VENICE – The heat wrapped itself around him, and the air seemed to nibble at his eyes. There was no breeze, not the slightest current; the day lay like a filthy blanket upon the city. Cars snaked past the Questura, their horns bleating in futile protest against changing lights or crossing pedestrians. Whirls of dirt and cigarette packages flying back and forth across the street marked their passing. Brunetti, seeing it, hearing it, and breathing it, felt as though someone had come from behind and wrapped tight arms around his chest. How did human beings live like this?

ATTITUDES – Brunetti sighed tiredly. Why couldn’t people learn to be more discriminating in whom they chose to hate, a bit more selective? Perhaps even a bit more intelligent? Why not hate the Christian Democrats? Or the Socialists? Or why not hate people who hated homosexuals?

VENETIANS – “Well, just think about the name, sir. Lega della Moralitá, as if they’d invented the stuff. They’ve got to be a bunch of basibanchi, if you ask me.” With that word, Veneziano at its most pure, scoffing at people who knelt in church, bowed so low as to kiss the pew in front of them, Vianello gave yet more proof of their dialect’s genius and his own good sense.

MONEY – Brunetti thought about this for a while, and he also thought about the way bankers always avoided using the word “money,” thought of the broad panoply of words they’d invented to replace that crasser term: funds, finances, investments, liquidity, assets. Euphemism was usually devoted to crasser things: death and bodily functions. Did that mean there was something fundamentally sordid about money and that the language of bankers attempted to disgrace or deny this fact?

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.

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