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When the body of man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. Where was the crime scene? And how can Brunetti identify the man when he can't show pictures of his face? The autopsy shows a way forward: it turns out the man was suffering from a rare, disfiguring disease. With Inspector Vianello, Brunetti canvasses shoe stores, and winds up on the mainland in Mestre, outside of his usual sphere. From a shopkeeper, they learn that the man had a kindly way with animals. At the same time, animal rights and meat consumption are quickly becoming preoccupying issues at the Venice Questura, and in Brunetti's home, where conversation at family meals offer a window into the joys and conflicts of Italian life. Perhaps with the help of Signorina Elettra, Brunetti and Vianello can identify the man and understand why someone wanted him dead.… (more)
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This book briefly talks about the way
Much of the story takes aim at a meat processing plant. After reading it, I'm glad I keep kosher. Otherwise, I might totally stop eating meat.
The story is plausable. Corruption, guilt, greed, and sex are all part of daily lives in any location. The people he talks to react as I would expect people, guilty or innocent, to react to questioning by the police.
Donna Leon's stories never miss the mark.
Because the man has a condition
In a remarkable setpiece, Leon describes the tour Brunetti and Vianello take through the slaughterhouse after hours. It is gruesome but not graphic, and a master class in how to write about something utterly horrible without using extremely specific sights and actions.
The mystery of who killed the victim and why does not make a difficult case. But that is not the point of Leon's book. Nor is the point the theme so similar to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
Rather, it is widespread and so often accepted corruption in personal and private lives that forms the foundation to Beastly Things. Whether it's Brunetti relying on the highly capable Signorina Elettra to discover information he needs or the business of any business -- to make money -- there is little innocence in his world.
Beastly Things is yet another deceptively thoughtful mystery from Leon, who once again also brings to vivid life Brunetti's Venice and the commissario's wonderful family.
Speaking of food, this book could result in a lot of new vegans.
Brunetti and Vianello pay a visit to an horrific slaughterhouse on the mainland at Mestre but in a sense what goes on in the management of this slaughterhouse and others in the near region is worse than the actual slaughter of the animals that they witness.
It evokes a deep feeling of melancholy in Brunetti about the state of things. He seems more bitter and disillusioned than has emerged in earlier novels.
Before Brunetti could answer, they were disturbed by the appearance from the left of a enormous – did it have eight decks? Nine? Ten? – cruise ship. It trailed meekly behind a gallant tug, but the fact that the hawser connecting them dipped limply into the water gave the lie to the appearance of whose motors were being used to propel them and which boat decided the direction.
What a perfect metaphor, Brunetti thought: it looked like the government was pulling the Mafia into port to decommission and destroy it, but the ship that appeared to be doing the pulling had by far the smaller motor, and any time the other one chose, it could give a yank on the hawser and remind the other boat of where the power lay.
and
In no way deterred by the failure of the book to spin up a winning combination, Brunetti opened to Book Eleven. ‘No thief can steal your will.’ This time he closed the book and set it aside. Again, he gave his attention to the light in the window and the statement he had just read: neither provided illumination.
Government ministers were arrested with frightening frequency; the head of government himself boasted, in the middle of a deepening financial crisis, that he didn’t have financial worries and had nineteen houses; Parliament was reduced to an open sewer. And where were the angry mobs in the piazzas?
Who stood up in Parliament to discuss the bold-faced looting of the country? But let a young and virginal girl be killed, and the country went mad; slash a throat and the press was off and running for days. What will was left among the public that had not been destroyed by television and the penetrant vulgarity of the current administration? ‘Oh, yes, a thief can steal your will. And has,’ he heard himself say aloud.
and
He had been curt; of course he had been curt, but he had not wanted to be sucked into yet another discussion of the crime. It troubled him that many people had so readily come to treat murder as a kind of savage joke, to which the only response was grotesque humour. Perhaps this reaction was no more than magic thinking, a manifestation of the hope that laughter would keep it from happening again, or from happening to the person who laughed.
Once again, BEASTLY THINGS comes into my category of crime fiction that makes you think. This is what we have come to expect from Donna Leon but from this novel you get the sense that in Italy corruption is winning the battle. How long can Guido Brunetti and his team fight the good fight?
Review: This story reminds me of 'Animal Farm', a bit. It's also has a quite touching ending. Interesting and enjoyable, although rather more
In this story, a man is found dead with no identification except for an unusual malady. So first the
The twists and turns that are uncovered relating to the Italian food supply and how it could be manipulated, was shocking, well-written in the extreme showing that ethics have a vital place in any society.
I must confess that I am a big fan of Montalbano, the Sicilian detective, but Leon does such a good job with this book that I may move my reading to the North.
But it is a city, and like every other city in the world, there is evil. When the body of a man is discovered in a canal, the work of Commissario Brunetti begins. This is the 21st outing for this urbane detective and. like those that came before, this case has long arms that reach out from the water city and into the real world beyond.
The body is something of a mystery. No identification, one shoe missing and the body itself suffering from a rare, non-life threatening disease. This latter thing gives the man a very distinct look, one that people are sure to remember. Like Brunetti does, although he can’t quite recall from whence that memory comes.
As in all of the Brunette novels there is a great array of various themes presented. The family life of the Commissario plays an important role in grounding the detective in real life, keeping him away that the world is not just full of crime and bad people but is in fact a very good and welcoming place. His office life, wether sparring with his boss or indulging Signorina Elettra in her flagrant misuse of her skills as a computer hacker. That is something that is always useful to the police in discovering the whys behind many of the people they face.
Beastly Things takes Brunetti away from his beloved Venice and on to the main land of Italy, to be surrounded by the many beastly things that abound there, not least of which are traffic and factories. It is to this last inconvenience that calls to Brunetti and his right hand man, Inspector Vianello. They have tracked the dead man to his home and his work as a veterinarian. It is not the man’s work with pets that may have caused his death, but the job he took a few months ago to certify the animals that were being brought to a industrial slaughterhouse as being good enough to process. And to certify the processed meat as being edible.
As in many of these novels, real world concerns, in this case animal rights and the humane processing of such, comes into play making the book have a greater world view that so many other plain detective novels fail to achieve. This is another fine addition to a long ling of very satisfying novels set in the all to real, and wet, world of Venice.
And the last chapter may have you grabbing for a hankie, it’s that good.
It is somewhat painful to read about this case. It involves corruption (of course) and murder (of course) at a slaughter house.
Guido’s remarks about traffic and choked highways are somewhat naively funny,
A highly recommended title and series ****
As usual, Brunetti is acutely
Leon draws several almost-caricatures: a deformed man, an enormously fat man, a tall, very skinny man, a man who cannot stand the vision of meat processing. She continues to lean on the ethical controversies between vegetarians and the conventionally omnivorous - it will be interesting to see if she carries this forward in the series..