Give Unto Others: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

by Donna Leon

Book Overview

**An Instant New York Times Bestseller**

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters

What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It's a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon's splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.

Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini's son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he's involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend's daughter's place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors--that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello, and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Exploring the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal, revealing previously untold elements of Brunetti's past, Give unto Others shows that the price of reciprocity can be steep.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802159400
• ISBN13: 9780802159403
• Release Date: March 2022
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

First Time Low Rating

I just finished book #31 in Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti series. I have only one more to read and I will have finished the entire series. And I sincerly hope, Ms. Leon continues to write the series. That said this is the first time I have ever given a review below 2 stars for this series. Mostly I have given 5 star reviews and a very few 4 star reviews. But I could not in good faith do that this time. The story dragged, and dragged and dragged! And I found myself thinking again and again "Get on with it....get to meat of the story!" But it never did seem to put the story together! I put down the book for days on end and then picked it up to start where I had left off....again. This book and it's story was just plain boring!! This was a real shock because as I said I have read through the first 30 books and loved every one of them...every one at least a 4 star or higher rating! Thinking it over I think I have the following to say. If you want to read the usual and wonderful police mysteries and police work of Commissario Brunneti....skip this one. If you want lessons on how the Financial Italian Government works at it's highest level, this is the book for you!! Please Ms. Leon, please when you write your next Commissario Brunneti book, stick to the police work in Venice and don't try to explain in detail how the Italian government works in other areas.