"Neither Commissario Brunetti nor his wife Paola have ever had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, so when a young cadet is found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy, Brunetti's emotions are complex: pity and sorrow for the death of a boy, close in age to his own son, and contempt and irritation for the arrogance and high-handedness of the boy's teachers and fellow-students." "The young man is the son of a doctor and former politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. Dr. Moro is clearly and understandably devastated by his son's death; but while both he and his apparently estranged wife seem convinced that the boy's death could not have been suicide, neither appears at all keen to talk to the police nor to involve Brunetti in any investigation of the circumstances in which he died." "As Brunetti - and the indispensable Signorina Elettra - investigates the doctor's political career and the circumstances of his estrangement from his wife, they are faced by a wall of silence, as the military protects its own and civilians are unwilling to talk. Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence?"--BOOK JACKET. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.

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 © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From: Reed Elsevier Inc. Copyright Reed Business Information

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. BillOtt. From: Syndetics Solutions, Inc. Distributed by Syndetic Solutions, Inc.