Doctored Evidence
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- €4.99
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- €4.99
Publisher Description
'[Leon] has a wonderful feeling for the social complexities of Venice, where corruption is as old and deep and treacherous as the canals ... Like all the best detective fiction, Doctored Evidence not only solves a mystery, but also anatomises the setting in which the crime occurred' Daily Mail
When a wealthy Venetian woman is found brutally murdered, the prime suspect is her Romanian maid, who dies in a tragic accident while fleeing the city, carrying a considerable sum of money and forged papers. When the old woman's neighbour returns from abroad, confessing to have given the maid the money out of pity, questions begin to arise, and Commissario Brunetti decides to take the case on himself. But what could have been the true motive for the murder in such nebulous circumstances if not greed? Or is Brunetti thinking of the wrong sin altogether?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While a bit too slow to rank among her best, Leon's 13th atmospheric Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (after 2003's Uniform Justice) still offers many pleasures, including a clever puzzle. When greedy, curmudgeonly Maria Grazia Battestini is murdered, the Venetian police suspect her Romanian housekeeper, whom they shoot when she tries to evade questioning. The case seems closed until a neighbor returns from a trip, claiming the housekeeper's innocence. Hardworking, cynical Brunetti, devoted to his family, succulent meals and justice, an honest man in a corrupt police department, takes over the case. He finds that Battestini's several bank accounts were transferred out of Italy upon her death, the source of the money unknown. Brunetti suspects that her lawyer, Roberta Marieschi, and niece, Graziella Simionato, who shared power of attorney, were in cahoots and that the money came from blackmail. After several false leads and assiduous attention to detail, Brunetti discovers the key to the crime pride, rather than greed, with the title a pun on the motive meanwhile one-upping his workplace enemy, the ambitious, careless Lieutenant Scarpa. Leon evokes the real Venice, not the place of romantic novels or glitzy travel guides but the gritty, inbred city of dishonest politicians and hamlet-like neighborhoods filled with gossip.
