Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4401 in Books
• Published on: 2008-04-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk
Donna Leon’s engaging books have been the cheapest way to travel to Italy for quite some time -- and her legion of admirers know that the Venice of her protagonist Commissario Brunetti is a wonderful destination for the crime fiction lover. Leon, an American expat who now lives in la Serenissima (with such luminaries as opera singer Cecilia Bartoli as one of her friends) has gone native – in no uncertain terms. Her knowledge of Brunetti’s water-logged beat is transmuted into vivid and evocative narratives: the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge are often the dark passageways to another, darker Italy, where hidden (and not-so-hidden) corruption – in politics and daily life – is very much an everyday thing (as headlines in the papers – not just in Donna Leon’s books –remind us on a daily basis).

The Girl of his Dreams demonstrates how much life is left in the Leon/Brunetti criminal world. A child’s body is found floating near some steps on the Grand Canal – it is that of a dead girl. But there have been no reports of missing children -- and the search for the identity of the youthful victim and her family takes Brunetti to many varied destinations, including a Gypsy encampment on the mainland, and (eventually), he turns up some very nasty secrets. As ever, it’s not just the villains who thwart Brunetti at every turn – it’s the venality and clandestine nature of the establishment that hampers him, almost as a matter of course.

This is Leon on effortless form – Brunetti fans need not hesitate. --Barry Forshaw

Synopsis
On a rainy morning, not long after the funeral of his mother, Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to a 911 call reporting a body floating near the steps in one of Venice's side canals. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water. But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewellery that she carries.So Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, and for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children - be they innocent or guilty. The investigation takes Brunetti from the canals and palazzos of Venice to a Gypsy encampment on the mainland, through quicksands of connections and relationships both known and concealed, as he struggles with both institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.

Customer Reviews

A 175 page story crammed in to 275!
Having waited keenly for the next 'Guido Brunetti' to appear, I read the dust cover summary and made a start soon after publication. 90 pages in, I was wondering if the publishers had made some sort of printing error - the dead girl had not yet been found in the Canal and the religious fraudster seemed to be going nowhere. It is only on page 100 that the real story begins and the original story is only mentioned again, as an apparent afterthought, towards the conclusion.
Ms Leon could have published the drowned girl tale as one of a series of a short stories(now there's an idea Donna!) and the previous reviewer's theory of a false start seems to be well founded. I wonder if Brunetti's career is coming to a close - maybe it's time for him to retire and write his memoirs!

A satisfying read
As always, with Donna Leon books, this is not just a detective novel, albeit a good one, but an evocation of modern-day Venice and a further instalment of the happy family life of Commissario Brunetti. The latter sets Leon's books apart from many other crime novels. She has also created a number of other characters who really come alive on the page such as Brunetti's wife, Paola; the computer wizard of a secretary Signorina Electra, who can find out anything about anybody, and the vanities of the lazy chief of police, Patta, whom Brunetti has to perpetually flatter and placate in order to keep him off his back.

Somehow Donna Leon manages to produce a whole series of books set in the same city with the same main characters that never seem stale or formulaic. Let's hope she can keep it up.

A little disappointing....
As an unashamed Venetophile and a lover of good mysteries I find Leon's books simply irresistable. I first stumbled upon them in England and for a time I had to send there for copies of her latest works because they were unobtainable in Canada. Fortunately that is no longer the case.
I have just devoured her latest: The Girl of his Dreams - and although I was fully absorbed from the beginning, at the very end I was left with something of a feeling of disappointment.
The initial story about a problem within the Church simply peters out and goes nowhere. From the moment the girl's body is discovered the earlier story is completely superseded and one wonders whether it represented a false start by the author.
Some aspects of the story about the girl's condition are never satisfactorily resolved and one can only deduce that they were inserted as "red herrings"....(I refrain from giving away details but if I say that it relates to a medical condition then those who have read the book will know what I'm referring to).
The "solution" seemed rather forced and unbelievable.
All in all I was left with rather an empty, unsatisfied feeling at the end. My only consolation was that it is indeed reflective of the uncertainty of reality.