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| A Noble Radiance | 
| Author: Donna Leon
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.75
You Save: $7.24 (91%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 25923
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0142003190
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780142003190
ASIN: 0142003190
Publication Date: August 26, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Reprint. GOOD with average wear to cover, pages and binding. We ship quickly and work hard to earn your confidence. Orders are generally shipped no later than next business day. We offer a no hassle guarantee on all our items.
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Product Description
Donna Leon has topped European bestseller lists for more than a decade with a series of mysteries featuring clever Commissario Guido Brunetti. Always ready to bend the rules to uncover the threads of a crime, Brunetti manages to maintain his integrity while maneuvering through a city rife with politics, corruption, and intrigue.
In A Noble Radiance a new landowner is summoned urgently to his house not far from Venice when workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave. The human corpse is badly decomposed, but a ring found nearby proves to be a first clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice's most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into both the heart of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving for their abducted son.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...
Great arm-chair travelling June 2, 2008
We had an awfully long and cold winter in Chicago and Donna Leon's books kept my cabin fever from getting out of control! I first heard about her on NPR and have read several of her novels over the past 6 months. Enjoyable!
 Sometimes Curiousity Can Kill You April 29, 2008
You may wonder after you finish this novel, how Donna Leon feels about the contemporary Italian conscious. I wonder that considering her opinion of the average contemporary Italian, that she continues to live in Italy (but it may explain why her novels have never been translated into Italian). Of all the people we meet in her books, only the family, and a few friends of Guido and Paola Brunetti seem to be above the pettiness of life.
Paola is always complaining about the deterioration in the quality of her students, and the machiavellian professors she works for and with. While Guido is cursed with a boss who is more pompous than Mussolini and has the ability to grovel like the worst syncophant. Guido does have the luck to be blessed with two wonderful children (smart, etc), a loving wife, and collegues who would take a bullet for him (Vianello already has).
Is contemporary Italy really as corrupt as Donna Leon makes it out to be? Or is it just that the Italian system itself (which has had over 60 governments since WW2) that is so Byzantine, that it only works though bribery. Anyone who has ever had to deal with the Italian bureaucracy can tell you that unless you "grease the skids", it's like trying to drive a dog sled across a cobblestone plaza.
Back to the story, which is not that involving, but as good as your average "Ed McBain", though the ending is a little forced.
Slow-Paced Mystery with a Solution That's Hard to Swallow November 20, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's a shame that A Noble Radiance is cast as a mystery. Take the need to solve the mystery out, and this would be an above-average novel about contemporary families in Venice.
Ms. Leon takes a long time to set up the mystery. Then, she has the investigation proceed very slowly as well. That would be fine if the resolution was interesting, unexpected, and credible. But to me, the resolution was nonsense: It just didn't ring true.
With much of the story taking place outside of Venice, there's not as much of the local color as usual. The best parts of the story relate to Guido Brunetti's father-in-law warning him about Guido's marriage to Paola, eating Chira's first dinner she's cooked for the family, and exploring Signorina Elletra's seemingly contradictory morals about getting secret information and making public investments.
Here's the set-up: A house and garden have fallen into ruin because the heirs are squabbling until a German buys the place for a huge sum and starts fixing it up. While the garden is being tilled, a bone sticks up that turns out to be human. As the police dig around, they also find a ring with the crest of a noble Venetian family, the Lorenzoni family, best known in recent times for having sold out the location of Venice's Jews to the SS during World War II. The family's son had been kidnapped two years earlier, and he was never found. When the autopsy shows a bullet hole in the skull of a young man, Commissario Guido Brunetti looks for a dental match. Finding one, he now has reason to dig into the kidnapping, looking for murderers.
The Lorenzonis have taken on their lost son's cousin as their heir. Was he involved? Why else had a motive?
As you finish this book, think about what the purpose of a family should be.
Consistent, intelligent mysteries July 1, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is another of Donna Leon's wonderful Comissario Guido Brunetti mysteries set in Venice. While some of them are slightly better than others, each is a solid, pleasurable, intelligent read. And Guido is a "best of breed" police inspector with humor, a conscience, and frustration with the corruption of the ruling powers in and around Venice.
Ken Le Huray October 10, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Donna Leon's creation of Guido Brunetti detective of Venice is one of the great figures of the genre. His family and the city of Venice are equally realisic. "A Noble Radiance" is full of the corrupt and aristocratic background of that city. The interplay of characters in the story is first class.
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