In my year of reading dangerously, I discovered that mysteries come in all flavors. Some seem to delight in a complex Rubik’s cube-style case where only a Mensa International member can solve the puzzle. Others dwell on the sordidness of the crime. A few are even light, witty, and big-hearted.

For fans of the writer Donna Leon, the mystery usually plays second fiddle to the characters and relationships. The setting in Vencie draws many of us in. The decent, erudite Venetian detectives are clearly crime solvers the reader can actually like. Having last returned to read the origin story of Venetian detective Guido Brunetti, I was delighted when a good friend gifted me the most recent in the Commissario Brunetti series—#33—and I jumped right back in.

A Refiner’s Fire: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (2024) by Donna Leon begins early on a spring morning when two teenage gangs are arrested after a violent fight in one of Venice’s squares. Brunetti’s closest colleague, Commissario Claudia Griffoni, offers to accompany 15-year-old Orlando home when his father doesn’t come to the station to gain his release. Her innocent gestures, including lending Orlando her scarf to wear on an especially cold night, come back to haunt her as she and Brunetti learn more about Orlando’s father and his troubled past. As is her style, Leon brings together contemporary issues with past ghosts of deceit and acts of official wrongdoing to infuse this satisfying work with social and moral messages worth pondering. A final fiery and violent clash puts Brunetti in danger while offering others a chance for redemption.

Leon brings her characters to life in ways that continue to satisfy. Brunetti and Griffoni demonstrate a trusting teamwork that sees the corruption yet still strives for the truth. Brunetti’s pompous superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, is surprisingly supportive of Brunetti’s work on this case, yet can’t conceal his vanity. The ever-resourceful secretary Signorina Elettra—a woman of “endless and instinctive deceit”—plays a key role in this newest book, as she helps Brunetti and Griffoni dig through layer-after-layer of coverups and lies. Brunetti’s wife Paola—a university lecturer in English Literature—plays a smaller role here but continues as a delightful and loving foil for her husband.

I read Leon’s latest story in the midst of our own very true-to-life setting of ill-gained, publicly flaunted, ostentatious wealth; corrupt politicians clinging to power and money through acts of sordid hypocrisy; a working class left behind with their abandoned factories and smoldering anger; and faithful public servants using all of their considerable abilities to bring a measure of justice to an unjust world. This book, just like the others I’ve read in the Commissario Brunetti series, rings true to life and continues to call us to strive for what is right, even in the midst of “the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.”

More to come . . .

DJB

Photo by Karsten Würth on Unsplash