Friends in High Places (Commissario Brunetti #9)
Friends in High Places (Commissario Brunetti #9) by Donna Leon
Blurb:
When Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years earlier, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant government department. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunetti at work, clearly scared, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is obviously going on that has implications greater than the fate of Brunetti's apartment …
Review:
Brunetti's best friend had often said that he wanted death to take him just at the moment he laid his last lira down on a bar and said, "Prosecco for everyone."
Well… Let's face it, this is only the second book by Donna Leon I've ever read and I haven't adhered to this series' order in the least bit but, more importantly, I don't really intend to do any of those things. I enjoyed the other book of her I had read well enough but I hardly remember anything about it and I pretty much only picked this one up because I found it on the street and wanted to give it a home (which is how I acquired a surprising amount of books). The thing is, the best aspect of this book was its smell (it has this really nice old paper smell) and while I enjoyed some parts of the story my overarching feelings for this book are more ambivalent.
Firstly, I wasn't all that interested in the actual plot and, I think, that is because it felt like there wasn't a plot to speak of until the very end. Brunetti just, kinda, wanders through his days in Venice and discovers some crimes which he can't do anything about, like, 99% of the time and then he moves on, eats the delicious food his wife had prepared and thinks about crime a little. That's it. I never even understood which crime he actually wanted to solve and then it turns out he didn't even manage to sufficiently solve the one he's (retrospectively?) set his eyes on. Frankly, I waited for the book to actually start until I was nearly finished and had to face the fact that it would, simply, never start at all.
Secondly, and maybe that's just me (or the fact that I'm not familiar with how Brunetti usually works) but I felt like Brunetti wasn't all that good at his job but I'm supposed to think he's doing great work. Sure, one can't solve crime on one's own but Brunetti was merely the an excuse for other people to do their work and, thusly, solve the crime. The only thing Brunetti actually did himself was maybe realizing what the rabbit-things meant and calling a person working at the newspaper and offering false information.
Thus, the two, arguably, most important aspects of a mystery/crime novel were pretty spoiled for me. Moreover, the rest was mediocre at best (I couldn't relate to any of the characters because they were so superficial but I enjoyed Paola's character nonetheless, the setting could have been used more interestingly but daydreaming about Venice is pretty nice etc.). So, in general, I can't say I particularly enjoyed myself but I also didn't dislike this book. Honestly, I was mostly quite disinterested.
Rating:
My first instinct is to say 2 out of 5 stars. I know this might seem rather harsh if I didn't actually dislike the book but I definitely think any higher rating would be too generous.
Details:
Name: Friends in High Places
Deutscher Titel: Feine Freunde
Series: Commissario Brunetti
Author: Donna Leon
Publisher: Arrow Books
Pages: 326
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