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| Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery (Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries) | 
| Author: Donna Leon
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
Category: Book
List Price: $22.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 669312
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.3 x 1
ISBN: 0871139189
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780871139184
ASIN: 0871139189
Publication Date: April 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Excellent Condition--for being read once. Book shows very light wear. 1 Hour Ship! ** 96% positive feedback past 90 days--new management overhaul! ** Shop the Internet's most eco-conscious bookseller and keep the earth clean! ** Red Carpet Books = Red Carpet Service.
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Product Description
Donna Leon's riveting new novel, Doctored Evidence, follows Commissario Guido Brunetti down the winding streets of contemporary Venice as he throws open the doors of a case his superiors would rather leave closed. When a miserly spinster is found brutally murdered in her Venice apartment, police immediately suspect her Romanian housekeeper. They are certain their job is done after the immigrant dies while fleeing arrest, but weeks later; a neighbor comes forward to defend the innocence of the accused. The only investigator who believes the alibi is Brunetti, who will have to go behind the backs of his superiors to vindicate the Romanian and find her employer's actual killer. As always, the indispensable hacking skills of the ever-loyal Signorina Elettra are the perfect complement to Brunetti's meticulous detective work. She discovers mysterious deposits in the old woman's bank account, but who made them? As Brunetti investigates, his wife, at home, reads him teachings on the Seven Deadly Sins. In a modern world of intrigue and nebulous morality, how do they relate to the murder at hand? Doctored Evidence is charged with suspense and evokes a contemporary Venice with Donna Leon's masterful flair.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
In Search of the Seven Deadly Sins March 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Early in Doctored Evidence, Commissario Guido Brunetti asks his wife, Paola, about a book she is reading . . . a text on religion that has been assigned to their daughter, Chiara. They muse about the seven deadly sins and speculate about whether or not anyone takes those sins seriously any more. During his case, Brunetti assumes that only certain sins can be motive enough for murder. Is he right?
As the story opens, Signora Battestini has been bludgeoned to death by someone strong. She's an old lady who never leaves her apartment, but nothing has been taken. A missing housekeeper seems worth tracking down by Lieutenant Scarpa, one of Vice-Questore Patta's enforcers. In the process of arresting her, a terrible accident takes place. Scarpa and Patta are satisfied that the housekeeper is the killer, and the case goes dormant. Brunetti is away on vacation at the time.
All might have stayed that way, but a neighbor comes to report that the housekeeper is probably innocent. Scarpa tries to get rid of the neighbor, but Brunetti ends up involved. From there, the real investigation begins.
One of the most interesting parts of this story is when Dona Leon fills in some background by Signorina Elletra Zorzi and her seemingly magical ability to access records that shouldn't be available to her. You'll be astonished by the contrast between her personal scruples and her unscrupulous methods for gaining police information.
Brunetti also gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar after doing some illegal searching. How will he handle the potential for exposure and discipline?
The mystery in this book is pretty good. It will be some time before you'll be able to figure out who the murderer is and the motive. The ultimate explanation was credible and added to the pedestrian tone of dealing with the minor and major annoyances of life:
How should you persuade the neighbors to make less noise at night?
How can an exploited housekeeper with questionable papers protect herself from exploitation?
How should a threat to respectability be met?
How can endless official delays be overcome?
Take a ride on the #1 Vaporetto if it's not crowded and enjoy the sights and sounds of Venice (I wouldn't dare suggest you try to enjoy the odors of Venice).
Doctored Evidence: The Doctor is in October 5, 2006
Donna Leon, who was born in New Jersey, has lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher, before moving to Venice many years ago to teach and now to write. "Doctored Evidence" is another Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery set in, and around her adopted city in which; I think, by now, she knows the best place to go for pizza, the worst road to avoid for construction, and the most impossibly noisy, motorcycle clogged, neighborhood. Her recent Commissario Brunetti mystery "Friends in High Places," won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for fiction. She has also been awarded the German Corinne prize for her novels.
In "Doctored Evidence," a wealthy old woman, widely known as the nastiest in her neighborhood, is found brutally murdered in her apartment. Police suspect the latest immigrant maid (they don't generally last but a month or two), who has disappeared and is thought to be heading for her native Romania. The immigrant, when approached by the border police at the train station, runs for it and is killed as she crosses the tracks. She's carrying a lot of money, and forged papers. So she's evidently guilty, police thinking goes.
But a clearly competent neighbor of the old woman's returns from a business trip to London, and throws some light on the day of the woman's death. The neighbor met with the immigrant maid that day: she gave her the going-home money, and she knows the immigrant would not have had enough time to kill the old woman before she had to leave to catch her intended train. So Brunetti decides to quietly investigate the case himself.
Italy, by the way, is quite a wealthy country these days, with a high standard of living,and, for a Catholic country, a remarkably low birth rate. If it were not for a constant stream of immigrants, legal and otherwise, to take the jobs Italians won't, there'd be nobody to look after the children and the elderly, to enable the extremely high percentage of Italian women who leave the home to work to continue in their careers. In this regard Italy resembles all the traditional western hemisphere.
Be that as it may, Brunetti finds a lot of people who hated Maria Grazi Battestini, including her heirs, and even her doctor. The doctor thinks, " She was an old cow and he hated her. Because he was a doctor and she his patient, he felt guilty about hating her, but not so guilty as to make him hate her any the less. Nasty, greedy, ill-tempered, forever complaining about her health and the few people who still had the stomach for her company, Maria Grazia Battestini was a woman about whom nothing good could be said, not even by the most generous of souls. The priest had given up on her long ago, and her neighbours spoke of her with distaste, sometimes with open animosity. Her family remained connected to her only by means of the laws governing inheritance. But he was her doctor, so he had no choice but to make his weekly visit...."
Eventually Brunetti will solve the mystery of the old woman's death, perhaps not entirely credibly, and it's not at all clear that his discoveries will actually result in a guilty verdict, or even a trial. As is not at all uncommon in Leon's books, in fact, it's likely that nothing will change. Certainly not the death of the Romanian maid, Florinda Ghiorghiu, whom we come to realize, too late, was merely fleeing the police as a matter of sensible policy learned in her homeland, and reinforced as an illegal immigrant in Italy. As ever, Leon continues to remind us that murder, violent death, is not actually a dinner party game, but a sad business. Her political views inform her opinion, of course, but many of us, even those of us who love mysteries, prefer to remember what murder actually is. If you do too, if you can stomach a bit of grit with your foreign glamor, this book, and this series, may be for you.
 Leon's Venice Is Magical February 6, 2005
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Donna Leon's thirteenth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery novel begins with the discovery of the very brutal murder of a hateful and despised old lady. The victim had harassed her neighbors for the past five years with her blaringly loud television. The immediate suspect is the woman's Romanian housekeeper, who was accosted crossing the Italian border on a return train trip to her native country. The suspect panicked, fled the train and was accidentally run over by another oncoming train. Brunetti was on vacation in Ireland at the time and Lieutenant Scarpa, a vindictive colleague, quickly declared the murder solved and essentially closed the case. Upon his return, Brunetti reopens the case when a conscientious women contacts the police declaring the housekeeper's innocence and providing a plausible alibi. This sets stage for a battle of wills between Brunetti and his hated arch-rival Lieutenant Scarpa. As always, the good guys are the triumvirate of Brunetti, loyal Inspector Vianello, and the wonderfully clever Signorina Elettra, the Vice-Questore's secretary. Signorina Elettra, using her computer hacking skills, digs up relevant information such as secret bank accounts, money transfers, and telephone records on a wide range of suspects. After Brunetti has a discussion with his wife Paola about the Seven Deadly Sins (pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth), he tries to reason out which of these sins was the motive for the murder of the old lady.
Leon does a marvelous job of introducing her varied cast of interesting characters and some of the current attitudes of Venetians. These include prejudice towards Eastern European immigrants and gays; the dread of AIDS; tax evasion and suspected construction fraud. As usual, we are treated to Leon's entertaining descriptions of Signorina Elettra's wardrobe, Paola's gourmet meals and the current activities of the Brunetti kids, Chiara and Raffi. In addition, we get some behind the scenes insights into the postal service, the legal profession, the schools administration and a bakery.
In DOCTORED EVIDENCE, Commissario Brunetti has become more impatient and seems to excessively browbeat witnesses and potential suspects -- no more Mr. Nice Guy. There are some memorable scenes where he locks horns with the easy-to-hate Lieutenant Scarpa.
 a collection of misunderstundings February 2, 2005
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
This lady lives in Italy. She does set the action in Venice.
But she does not want her books translated in italian.... Why ?
Because they provide only a caricatural view of italy and italians,
which an italian reader would recognize and laugh at....
Please, enjoy her, but do not think that all we italians are
like she depicted us...
'Death in Venice' becomes a Donna Leon cliche April 22, 2004
15 out of 16 found this review helpful
For all her "baker's dozen" Guido Brunetti books, Donna Leon continues to amaze this reader with her ability to sustain a police procedural so competently, so willingly, and so fantastically. It's Venice once again and the good Commissario finds himself lured into what appears to be a routine case: a "foreigner" has been apprehended for murder and theft and before the police can secure her, she bolts and is run over by an oncoming train. A simple case. Case closed.
Ah, but here is where Brunetti comes in. Certain suspicious elements emerge and within a few minutes, he's completely immersed into the whole scene. Along the way, Donna Leon incorporates several socially significant issues (as she always does) that serve only to enhance the plot outline. Her critique on Venezian politics and life in general in that Pearl of the Adriatic stand on their own merit. Once again, Leon's brilliance at creating memorable characters make this just routine for her: but for her readers, each volume is a true adventure in itself.
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