The golden egg

There's an autumnal tone to Donna Leon's latest Venetian mystery, THE GOLDEN EGG (Atlantic Monthly, $26), that suits the melancholy mood of Commissario Guido Brunetti when he looks into the suspicious death of Davide Cavanella, the deaf and mentally disabled man who worked for his neighborhood dry cleaner. It strikes Brunetti as sad, as well as sinister, that he's unable to find any public record of Davide, that his mother can't produce her son's birth or baptismal certificates, school documents or any other verification of his life. In the eyes of the state, Davide never existed. "It daunted Brunetti, the pathos of it." An articulate man who delights in the lively conversations he shares with his wife and two children, Brunetti is haunted by the silent world Davide inhabited. "If the Brunettis had a religion," Leon tells us, "it was language." And so this thoughtful policeman is also led to brood over the debasement of language by the politicians and bureaucrats who cynically confuse, misdirect and misinform the public. A Neapolitan colleague reminds him that even regional dialects serve a divisive purpose, keeping people from recognizing their common cause and preventing them from realizing that "we're all the same: beaten down by this system that is never going to change." As Leon wryly points out in this unusually reflective detective story, the same system that couldn't keep track of Davide has somehow managed to overlook evidence that the mayor's son is complicit in a bribery scheme. "Why do we tolerate this," Brunetti's secretary asks when presented with this latest flagrant example of corruption, "and not go after them with clubs?" That's something Brunetti often wonders. And he sadly concludes that short of emigration or suicide, there aren't many options for people whose political system is so dysfunctional. Meanwhile, the commissario carries on as he always does, solving one crime at a time, reversing one injustice after another, then heading home to drink a little wine, read a little Tacitus and play another little language game with his family. Murdered children aren't uncommon in genre thrillers, but children who are killers are harder to find. That alone makes Lisa Ballantyne's jolting first novel, THE GUILTY ONE (Morrow/HarperCollins, papar, $14.99), something of a novelty, since it follows the trial of an 11-year-old boy accused of battering an 8-year-old playmate to death in a London park. But this young Scottish writer isn't simply out to shock; she's intent on raising awareness of how parental abuse and societal indifference instill in some children a smoldering, explosively violent rage. Daniel Hunter was one of those children. After being taken from his drug-addicted mother, he went through several foster families before ending up with Minnie Flynn, a bighearted farm woman who took in damaged children the way she rescued unwanted animals. Saving Daniel from his furies was a long and hazardous ordeal, but he finally emerged to become a lawyer specializing in the defense of juveniles like Sebastian Croll. At age 11, Sebastian is the youngest client Daniel has defended, but he's the same age Daniel was before Minnie tamed him, and he's seething with the same anger. The two stories have their parallel points, and both are sensitively told. But while Sebastian's trial provides high drama, Daniel's self-destruction is quietly heartbreaking. The protagonists in Jo Bannister's various procedural series range from clever amateur sleuths and scrappy private eyes to seasoned police inspectors, but one way or another, they're all variations on the civilized English detective who is patient with people and good at whodunits. DEADLY VIRTUES (Minotaur, $24.99) adds another detective to this roster: Hazel Best, a young cop still on probation and on her first posting - to a small West Midlands town known for its low crime rate. Hazel is a straight shooter, pragmatic but principled, and her main function is to deal with an ethical dilemma that will toughen her up for future assignments. But the most remarkable character here is Gabriel Ash, a recovering trauma victim and the baffled recipient of a coded message from a young man who knows he's about to be murdered. This is the kind of puzzle plot Bannister is known for; Gabriel is the kind of character who takes satisfying shape before your eyes; and Hazel's is the kind of classic detective work that's always welcome in a mad, mad world. The best scenes in C.J. Box's new wilderness adventure, BREAKING POINT (Putnam, $26.95), are those in which heavily armed men chase one another up a mountain in Wyoming and everybody starts shooting at everybody else. But the thrills don't stop there. Some idiot sends up a drone (a drone? in Wyoming?) with a missile that starts a forest fire, sending whoever is still alive scrambling to get off the mountain before they're toast. The thing is, the only escape route is across Savage Run Canyon, an impassable geological wonder "so steep and narrow that sunlight rarely shone on the stream in the bottom." O.K., it's hopeless; but let's just say that a few survivors (led by that nice game warden Joe Pickett) manage to make it. Do you think they might have to navigate that treacherous river on a log? Box really knows how to write this stuff; he actually seems to get better at it with every book. But he's never been very good at character development, and his current villains (mostly agents from the evil federal government) are pathetic. 'Were all the same,' a cynical colleague tells Commissario Brunetti, since we're all 'beaten down by this system.'

*Starred Review* It isn't so much crime itself that intrigues Venetian police commissario Guido Brunetti as it is the hidden stories behind the crime, or lurking on its edges. So it is again in this twenty-second Brunetti novel. At the urging of his wife, Paola, Brunetti investigates the death of a mentally handicapped man who worked at the family's dry cleaners. Did he really die of a sleeping-pill overdose? And why are there no official records indicating that the victim even existed? As Brunetti digs into the matter, he finds himself less bothered by the circumstances of the man's death than by the fact that he managed to live for 40 years without leaving any bureaucratic traces. Others would see only a mildly curious anomaly in the man's lack of a human footprint across a lifetime; Brunetti sees mystery and sadness, and it prompts him to keep digging. What he finds is a saga of appalling human cruelty, but one that eludes the penal code. In stark contrast to the tyranny of silence that shrouded the forgotten man's life is the outpouring of language and love that encircles the Brunetti family dinner table. In the end, this novel is a celebration of the humanizing power of words. At one point, Leon says, describing the dinnertime conversation, Paola expressed a wish and used the subjunctive, and Brunetti felt himself close to tears at the beauty and intellectual complexity of it. Name another crime novel that ends like that. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Leon's success well more than one million copies in print in North America; a devoted library following is testament to the heartening fact that character counts in crime fiction.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2010 Booklist

Commissario Guido Brunetti, out of a sense of guilt and at the urging of his compassionate wife, investigates the suspicious death of a disabled man, Davide Cavanella, in Leon's intriguing 22nd mystery featuring the crafty Venetian police inspector (after 2012's Beastly Things). Davide's mother is unwilling to discuss his death. Worse, there's no official evidence of Davide's existence: he apparently was never born and never went to school, saw a doctor, or received a passport. The colorful locals are uncooperative. Brunetti's understanding of the Venetian bureaucracy, which operates smoothly on bribery and familial connections, allows his subordinates to enlist the help of various aunts and cousins, as is neatly shown in a subplot involving the mayor and his son. Appreciative of feminine charms, the deeply uxorious Brunetti amply displays the keen intelligence and wry humor that has endeared this series to so many. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Those who follow Leon should listen as Venetian policeman Commissario Guido Brunetti, in his inimitable, articulate manner, solves a murder and comments on the social ills of his beloved city in this 22nd entry (after Beastly Things) in the series. Brunetti's wife, Paola, tells him that an employee at their drycleaner's, a mentally handicapped man, has just died of a sleeping pill overdose. Brunetti investigates and is surprised when he can't find a birth certificate, passport, driver's license, or anything else to prove that the man had ever existed. Before long, powerful people are implicated, but why would they want the man dead? As usual, beautifully narrated by David Rintoul and not to be missed. Verdict Recommended to those who enjoy mysteries set in unusual settings with great characters, such as Louise Penny's "Armand Gamache" series. [The Atlantic hc was a New York Times best seller.-Ed.]-Sandra Clariday, Tennessee Wesleyan Coll., Athens (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Commissario Guido Brunetti, the second-sharpest member of the Venetian Questura, investigates the death of a man who barely had a life to begin with. Brunetti's wife, Paola Falier, rarely intrudes into his professional life, but she can't help being distraught at the death of the boy who helps out at her dry cleaner's, even though he's not a boy--he turns out to be over 40--and she doesn't know his name. Davide Cavanella, a deaf-mute who may have been mentally disabled as well, apparently swallowed a handful of sleeping pills because they looked like candy, then choked in his own vomit. More interesting than any questions about his death, however, are questions about Davide's life. Why has this obviously disabled person never made a claim on any of the government programs designed to help him? For that matter, why has he left no paper trail at all? Brunetti (Beastly Things, 2012, etc.) doesn't believe Ana Cavanella's story that her son's papers were stolen years ago, but he's brought up short by the alternative: that there never was any official record of his existence. Aided by Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's subversive secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi, the sharpest mind in the Questura, Brunetti turns over all the stones of Venice in his search for Davide's roots. The clues that link the dead man to the wealthy Lembo family won't surprise readers familiar with the pervasive corruption Leon's unearthed in Venice past and present (The Jewels of Paradise, 2012). But they'll savor the pleasures of dialogue as elliptical in its way as Henry James and a retrospective shock when they finally appreciate the import of the tale's unobtrusive opening scene and its sly title.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.