Friends in High Places

Friends in High Places (2000) Donna Leon

When Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years earlier, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant government department. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunetti at work, clearly scared, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is obviously going on that has implications greater than the fate of Brunetti’s apartment.

That’s a far better summary than I can come up with right now.

This book really looks at the corruption in Italy–and I suppose in Venice.

At no time did it occur to him, as it did not occur to Paola, to approach the matter legally, to find out the names of the proper offices and officials and the proper steps to follow. Nor did it occur to either one of them that there might be a clearly defined bureaucratic procedure by which they could resolve the problem.

As I read these stories, it occasionally comes to mind that Michael, a Lawful Good Order Muppet, would never survive.

Despite the corruption, and the fact that the criminal often goes free in these book, they generally aren’t dark. This one, however, had a particularly dark passage that resonated with me, considering events in my life recently.

No, Signora, your Marco will never have any trouble again, but all that you will have now, for the rest of your lives, is loss and pain and the terrible sense that you somehow failed this boy. And no matter how deep your knowledge that you were not responsible for it, your certainty that you were will always be deeper and more absolute.

Yeah, it’s been that kind of year.

But despite the dark, it’s an interesting mystery, and I did enjoy it.
Rating: 7/10

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