Travel and the Art of Writing

Willful Behavior by Donna Leon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I consider Donna Leon to be one of the most literate writers of the past twenty years. During that time she has put out twenty books, all of which feature Comissario, Guido Brunetti, of the Venice police, and his family, wife, Paula, and children, Chiara and Raffi. The characters in these books become well-known and loved to Leon’s legion followers in the many languages into which her books have been translated. Her writing style is highly literate, her stories engaging and current. She appears to take her subject matter from the latest newspapers, but her setting is always Venice, a city she lives in and draws with accuracy and love.
In Willful Behavior we follow Brunetti’s investigation into the death of a young female university student. The tendrils of the plot creep deep into history; into art theft during the second world war. As always with Leon’s books there is dialogue concerning politics, religion, history and society in general. These are the thinking person’s detective stories.


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