GIRL OF HIS DREAMS by DONNA LEON
October, 2015
PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Born September 28, 1942, in NJ. Avocational Interests: Baroque opera. Addresses: Home: Venice, Italy.
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CAREER:
Writer. Former crime reviewer for the Sunday Times, London, England; professor of English literature, Italy; taught at American military bases in Italy. Founder of Il Complesso Barocco (an opera company), Venice, Italy. Worked as a teacher in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, England, Iran, and China.
AWARDS:
Japan's Suntory Prize for best suspense novel, for Death at la Fenice; Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Crime Writers'
Donna Leon writes the Guido Brunetti mysteries, whose protagonist is a likable Venetian policeman. As Vice-Commissario of the Venice Police, he opposes the blatant corruption around him. Crimes often involve the Mafia and expose involvement at the highest levels of local or national government. Beneath his cynical air, Brunetti is a stalwart defender of justice who will circumvent rules and authorities that do not serve it. Secondary characters (his wife and children) add richness and humor. Complex suspenseful storylines are secondary to characterization, with Venice and its people providing a fascinating backdrop. Start with: Death at La Fenice.
Death at La Fenice (Jul 1992) Series: Guido Brunetti, #1
Death in a strange country (Jan 1993) Series: Guido Brunetti, #2
Dressed for death (Jun 1994) Series: Guido Brunetti, #3
Death and judgment (Jun 1995) Series: Guido Brunetti, #4
Acqua Alta (Oct 1996) Series: Guido Brunetti, #5
The death of Faith (Jan 1997) Series: Guido Brunetti, #6
A noble radiance (Jan 1998) Series: Guido Brunetti, #7
Fatal remedies (Jan 1999) Series: Guido Brunetti, #8
Friends in high places (Jan 2000) Series: Guido Brunetti, #9
A sea of troubles (Jan 2001) Series: Guido Brunetti, #10
Wilful behavior (Jan 2002) Series: Guido Brunetti, #11
Uniform justice (Aug 2003) Series: Guido Brunetti, #12
Doctored evidence (Apr 2004) Series: Guido Brunetti, #13
Blood from a stone (Mar 2005) Series: Guido Brunetti, #14
Through a glass darkly (Mar 2006) Series: Guido Brunetti, #15
Suffer the little children (May 2007) Series: Guido Brunetti, #16
The girl of his dreams (May 2008) Series: Guido Brunetti, #17
About face (Apr 2009) Series: Guido Brunetti, #18
A question of belief (May 2010) Series: Guido Brunetti, #19
Drawing conclusions (Apr 2011) Series: Guido Brunetti, #20
Beastly things (Apr 2012) Series: Guido Brunetti, #21
The golden egg (Mar 2013) Series: Guido Brunetti, #22
By its cover (Apr 2014) Series: Guido Brunetti, #23
Falling in love (Apr 2015) Series: Guido Brunetti, #24
AUTHOR READ ALIKES:
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Kent, Christobel Reason: Kent and Leon set their mysteries in Italy with melancholy men as sleuths. The men have to balance their personal lives with their work. The intricate plots have a strong emphasis on the psychological aspect of crime. The vivid descriptions of Italy give these books a strong sense of place. -- Merle Jacob
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Dibdin, Michael Reason: Dibdin's mysteries based in Rome will please Leon's fans. Dibdin's detective Zen fights organized crime and more throughout the country, while Leon's Vice-Commissario Brunetti works the region around Venice. Characters are more important than plot, and both detectives must fight the corruption within and outside of the system. -- Katherine Johnson
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Nabb, Magdalen Reason: Nabb and Leon write intelligent, elegant, character-based mysteries set in Italy. Their lead police detectives are likable, ordinary-seeming men who must deal with official corruption while understanding that human lives may be more important than the actual resolutions to the investigations. -- Katherine Johnson
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Camilleri, Andrea Reason: Fans of world-weary Italian police detectives faced with corruption as well as murder will enjoy both Camilleri and Leon. Despite their different settings, the stories and the characters have much in common, including an enjoyment of Italian food, as well as vivid descriptions of the locales. -- Katherine Johnson
THE INTERVIEW
Politics, faith, and the occasional corpse
June 1, 2008
Donna Leon is best known for her subtle and enduring Commissario Guido Brunetti detective series, set in Venice. The latest installment in that series, "The Girl of His Dreams" (Atlantic Monthly, $24), is Leon's 17th Brunetti outing and one of her finest; a cunning novel of great depth, it opens with the peaceful death of Brunetti's mother but soon introduces us to a more violent, subterranean reality that exists underneath the picturesque Venetian surface.
Leon has lived in Venice for 25 years. She spoke while on vacation in Switzerland.
Q. How and when did Brunetti arrive?
A. I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends, and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation, and we started talking about how to kill him, where to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book. It took about a year, and after it was finished it sat in a drawer because I've never really had any ambition. I was always pretty shiftless in my life. But I entered "Death at La Fenice" in a contest, it won, I got a contract for two books, then two more, and so it went.
Q. Had you read Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen detective series when you started?
A. I'm not sure. I did read the first couple of Aurelio Zen books and thought they were very, very good, but the book of his I like best is "Dark Specter," set in Seattle. All through graduate school, instead of having a television I read murder mysteries: Hammett, Chandler, Ruth Rendell, P. D. James.
Q. The series is a sly commentary on environmental issues, politics, the Catholic Church. Is that very deliberate?
A. I try to avoid preaching. [My attitude to the Catholic Church] is shaped by the fact that I live in a country that is strangled politically by the church. Its iron grasp is firmly around the throat of the Italian government. So it's hard to be sympathetic to it in any way, as an institution. The general feeling among my friends is "My God, what did Italy do to deserve to have both the Vatican and the Mafia?" Most Italians don't take it very seriously, of course. The church baptizes you, marries you, buries you, that's it. But there is a good priest in this latest novel.
Q. Is this novel darker than previous ones?
A. I think it's the darkest because of the hopelessness and because almost everybody, with the exception of Brunetti and some of his friends, behaves badly.
Q. Has actual crime become more peripheral in your fiction?
A. I'm really not interested in who; I'm much more interested in why. I think that comes of living in Italy, where nothing is as it seems. For example, while Italy is completely obsessed with immigration, a newspaper article recently appeared saying that the Camorra, the Calabrian Mafia, last year probably made 42 billion euro. The Italian Mafia in total probably made 93 billion euro. Then there are the hundreds of murder victims. Who cares about immigration when you've got 93 billion euro going to the Mafia? When you've got a state of open warfare, when the reason that the garbage in Naples hasn't been picked up in 14 years is that the Mafia runs the place?
Q. In this novel you wonderfully convey the pain of loss. Do you also feel that for your characters?
A. Not so much, perhaps because I'm pulling the strings and I know what these characters can and cannot do. I know intuitively what they will say, how they will respond. In that sense they remain locked in my workroom. Anna Karenina is more real to me. The death of Lily Bart in "The House of Mirth" reduces me to tears. Those characters are more real to me, in a way, than my own creations.
Q. Are you quite clinical, then, in your approach?
A. Not at all. I never know what's going to happen in a novel. I don't have a plan or an outline. In fact I just got the idea for the next one today when I was working in the garden. Suddenly the word "planetary" came into my head and I thought "Wow, I could write about people who believe in all that mystical stuff." Card turners, magicians, horoscopes, are all very popular in Italy. There was just a mega-trial here of two television clairvoyants who were fleecing people. So that's the book after next, because the one for next year is already finished.
Q. You never stop, do you?
A. [Laughs.] I have two settings, high and off. I wake up like this! And writing these books is fun; they can still make me laugh.
How do you take breaks from the series?
I do a lot of journalism for various European newspapers, among other publications. I'm involved with a baroque opera company here in Italy. I write some of their booklet material, comments on operas. I also write for some baroque opera festivals because this music is my real passion.
Anna Mundow, a freelance journalist living in Central Massachusetts, can be reached via e-mail at ama1668@hotmail.com.
© Copyright 2008 Globe Newspaper Company.
