Acqua Alta (Commissario Brunetti Book 5)

I find this one of the best of her Commissario Brunetti books. I greatly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it.

I love her books, but this one dragged for me, perhaps the mafia brought something more ugly to the story, but I had trouble finishing it, because I felt the depression of dark menacing clouds, the walls and buildings closing in and freezing rain that seems to attack in sheets almost daily . Brunetti seemed tired which is part of reality of all peoples who fight the depression of winter as they trudge through the endless days of winter. Which reminds the readers that Brunetti is the everyman, who se days, even in one of the most beautiful cities of the world, becomes monotonous as he pulls on galoshes , rain coat and fetches an umbrella and slogs through long day after day of winter. But still, even the mafia seemed logged down by this ennui, not even putting up a fight.

Love this series. Guido Brunetti is great and the endings are never Hollywood nonsense. I look forward to reading more.

Though no one is near a theater, let alone a stage, the book has a theatricality to it. The climax seemed staged. The pace of the book was slow. In a few places, it clogged up.

The book was in good shape and the dust cover was perfect

Most of Ms. Leon's books are well crafted and this is no exception. My comments are directed to all of her books rather than just this one. After reading several of her books, it is easy to understand why she does not want her books translated into Italian. It seems like the only good thing that the author sees in Venice ( and Italy) is the food and the Commissario and his family. Oh yes, and occasionally she remarks on the beauty of this ediface or that building.But for the most part, according to her anyway, it's a wonder that anything gets done in that place, and its citizens are mostly venal, corrupt and morally blind. But of course, there is Brunetti who Quixote-like, tries and tries in vain to bring justice to a people who don't seem to understand the concept.I rarely get a sense of fulfillment in these books. Brunetti plods along to the end when typically he finds that for some reason or other, he cannot bring the miscreants to justice. I do enjoy reading the books. I don't really know why, perhaps it's the setting.There is certainly no suspense, nor any "action" that I experience. I wonder why the author chooses to live in Venice, based on her descriptions of the ineptitude of the Italian government and its police forces.Brunetti is a sensitive man, perhaps to a fault. He is, as he admits to himself, an uxorious husband; he a feminized male. As hard as she tries, Ms. Leon does not understand male psychology. Her hero is a woman trying to act like a man. His wife is an obnoxious woman who must be obeyed and who must keep the commissario's jewels somewhere in a box. The children, especially the son, apparently are ageless, perennially children. The son who should be 20 by now is somewhere described as "playing" in the park.The children are not real characters, just cut-outs placed here and there.Of course there is the formuliac "boss," who is mindless and arrogant, and with whom Brunetti constantly must do battle. And then there is Signorina Elettra who might just as well run the entire operation sitting in front of her computer. Really. And so it goes. But as I said, I enjoy reading the books, but they starting to wear me down, and I fear that my relationship with the author is coming to close. I want to get back to detection mysteries that have actual mysteries, villians, action and rather than existential dead-ends, some sense of completion for the reader.

Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series is a wonderful read! Brunetti is an upper level police detective in Venice, Italy. In addition to deep and finely developed characters, the stories weave in and out of the lagoon and canals of this ancient city, into Venetian palaces and campos, restaurants, and markets, churches and cultural sites. In Acqua Alta, Commissario Brunetti must solve an assault and a murder while sloshing through the rising water of storm and high tide flooding the city. I have never been to Venice, and each new book in this series is a canal ride to discovery of the very special character of Venice and the Venetian people. I find myself daily googling pictures of the sites featured in the stories, and looking up the Italian phrases and words sprinkled through the stories like fine Italian spices; I feel like I am part of the unique culture of Venice, moreso with every page I turn. I have read nothing else since I started this series, and it’s unlikely that I will until I have read the very last page of the very last book. The writing is excellent, and the stories equal the best detective stories written. My thanks to the author for a cultural experience embedded within terrific stories!

Donna Leon's Brunetti series is addictive.I finish one and then try to move on to something else, but find myself wanting to get back into what is happening with Commisario Brunetti and his family. I had started in the middle of the series, and have now gone back and started reading from book one. So far, this book is my favorite. The setting is Venice, early winter. One of Brunietti's friends is violently attacked and injured, and he wants to discover why. Almost like another substantial character is the acqua alta (high water) a natural phenomenon that has occurred for centuries when especially high tides caused by the moon's gravitational pull coincide with a warm wind blowing across the Mediterranean that forces water from the Adriatic Sea into the Venetian lagoon. It happens perhaps every three years, and this one is particularly exceptional. Donna Leon's description is so good that you almost feel the driving rain and sloshing through water high enough to overflow boots and soak shoes, and make getting from one place to another very difficult. Part of the mystery is how rare art pieces which have been loaned to museums for temporary displays have now been stolen, replaced by very good fakes, so good that it takes an expert to determine which is real and which is the reproduction.

"It was the siren at San Marco, calling out to the sleeping city the news that the waters were rising: acqua alta had begun."Ever visited Venice and wondered about those boards and lengths of tubular metal that appear in the strangest of places? Did you think they were there for use in an open-air table-top sale? In Saint Mark's Square? No, those boards are there for the acqua alta, those days when the waters of the lagoon invade the alleys of the watery city. Alas, they occur with more and more regularity as the city continues to sink and climate change continues to result in rising sea-levels.`Acqua Alta' is the fifth Brunetti novel, and sees the return of lesbian couple Brett Lynch (Bette Lynch?) and Flavia Petrelli, archaeologist and opera diva respectively. The focus now is on Brett and her reputation, as some ancient Chinese ceramics go missing, and the director of the city's museums is somehow implicated in switching them for fake ones. The story and the writing return to form after the somewhat disappointing fourth novel.In this instalment we learn more about Signorina Elettra's background and how she came to be at the Questura. But why would Brunetti vow never the let her and his wife Paola meet? We can take some assurance, though, in Brunetti's boss being continuously bumptious ("This isn't a social club here Commissario") and in the fact that there appears no sign of the scaffolding around the church of San Lorenzo coming down.There are the occasional references that one feels can only have come from personal experience. For example, when the author writes about a bar on the Zattere - here called Il Cucciolo (the cub, the puppy) - that Brunetti avoided because "the waiters were the rudest in the city", one wonders if she had a real bar in mind. Perhaps there is also a dig at the late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century art historian Bernhard Berenson, when Donna Leon has a character comment about Berenson's judgement on Venetian paintings being up for sale.This is an enjoyable read; now I am ready for the next one in the series.

I think I liked this book more than the others since this book did not have the usual corrupt government organizations in it, nor the politicians that law can not touch. It's a classic crime instead with selfish thieves, more easy to read about than the complicated machinations of Italian bureaucracy and government system.Brett Lynch is back from book one and so is her lesbian lover Flavia Petrelli which makes it nice since the reader that reads these books in order, knows the characters as well as Brunetti's family. Brett gets beaten to a pulp in relation to her profession as an archeologist and soon Brunetti is trying to figure out where original artifacts from gravesites and museums have ended up. Of course they have ended up in Venezia and he has to get acquainted with quite mad members of the Sicilian mafia. It is not so much a mystery to who have committed a murder, because someone does get murdered, but how to get to the culprit. And how he has to do all this in a flooded Venezia, Acqua Alta. The latter gives a true feel to what the city is like in February and the weather does complicate the solving of the case.

This is Brunetti 5. I ordered Brunetti 4 and 5 at the same time but Amazon were unable to find me a copy of No. 4. This is not as complex a story as the previous books in the series, or maybe I know quite a bit about Brunetti's home life and workplace already? Anyway this book is about very very ancient ceramics and the desire that a person can have to want to own works of art of international importance and untold value. It is not a complex story as are previous Brunetti stories I have read, it is dark and rather predictable. It takes places during the wet season in Venice which is continuous and uncomfortable for them and boring for us. However I know Guido Brunetti continues his work through many more volumes so presumably the pace and complicity revives to entertain the reader.

Very disappointed. I like books that feed the imagination, not stifle it with overbearing superfluous detail. The author feels the need to explain absolutely everything, and her attempts to convey what her characters are thinking are trite and often do not ring true. The result is a rather pedestrian, predictable tale that failed to engross me ( although I laboured on hoping for better ). A more skilled writer would be able to convey the meaning of a "look" or gesture with a subtlety that this book lacks, and credit the reader with a little more intelligence than this author does. The lead Characters lack depth, and seem to have been plucked out of some wealthy American University town rather than (predominantly) a Venetian background - how many cops are married to University professors and read Suetonious for relaxation I wonder? I know and love Venice but didn't get that sense of place that other reviewers have raved about. And the quality of the plot? Predictable, but decent for a crime novel so raises my rating from one to two stars.

I benefited from reading this in Venice in August 2013 - experiencing rather different weather than Brunetti and the other characters in this story set in winter and 'acqua alta' floods. Donna Leon's target this time is corruption in museum management/ historic artifacts - involving brutal beatings, kidnapping and murder which tests all of Brunetti's detection skills. The characters, as usual with Leon, are well drawn and the plotting excellent, building to an exciting climax.Venice comes to life - you don't have to be there to enjoy this book. Brunetti at one point ponders on the decay of the Palazzo Priuli, being the subject of an inheritance dispute and therefore physically neglected for years. This, like many of Leon's observations via Brunetti, is historically true. Leon was writing in 1996. I can report that by 2013 the Palazzo Priuli was restored, but at cost of having been converted into an hotel.Fans of Donna Leon will not be disappointed and this would be a good starting point for those who have not read her books before.The Kindle transcription is very good. I noticed only two typos, one of which was in an Italian place name, so these would not impair anyone's enjoyment of the book.