Earthly Remains

Starting with Death at La Fenice in 1992, Donna Leon has written 30 books in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series. This is about #26 in the series, by my reckoning, and the 4th one I have read. Like two earlier books (Death in a Strange Country and Venetian Reckoning/ aka Death and Judgement) this one deals with corporate greed and corruption and, also like other books, the cost of those practices on humans and the environment. This book starts out rather slowly. Guido has reached the end of his rope with the mental gymnastics he has to endure to stay in his job after he fakes a heart attack to protect one of his fellow officers from attacking a man brought in for questioning. The fake goes too far and he is carted off to the hospital in an ambulance where the doctor concludes that his heart is fine but his blood pressure is dangerously high and recommends he take a 2-week break from work. Well-connected wife Paola suggests he stay in the currently vacant villa belonging to her aunt's on the nearby island of Sant' Erasmo. The caretaker, Davide Casati, turns out to be a former friend and rowing partner of Guido's father, and Guido takes the opportunity to reconnect with the pleasures of rowing in the laguna around the islands. Davide also introduces Guido to his carefully hidden hives of bees and expresses his concern about the unexplained deaths in several of the hives. He seems to feel responsible not only for the dying bees but also for the cancer death of his wife a few years ago. Shortly before Davide is found drowned on one of the islands after a storm, he had asked Guido, “Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?” Guido makes it his mission to find out if Davide really killed himself as it appears. He tracks down two of Davide's former co-workers and learns of a chemical explosion which killed or maimed several workers at the place where they used to work, explaining the dramatic scars Guido has seen on Davide's back. It turns out that the company was illegally dumping toxic chemicals into the laguna and so Davide carried the guilt all these years for his role in that activity. Kirkus concludes, "Perhaps the most minimal of all Leon’s mysteries, with no suspects to speak of and few details of the Commissario’s domestic life or his eternal professional tussles at the Questura." On the other hand, the New York Times asserts, "When she’s writing about her beloved Venice, Donna Leon can do no wrong. ... her new mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best. It’s also one of her saddest, dealing as it does with the seemingly unstoppable polluting of the great lagoon."