Earthly Remains (Guido Brunetti Series #26)

by Donna Leon

Overview

At the start of Earthly Remains, Commissario Guido Brunetti, confronted once more by someone of privilege avoiding censure, loses patience at work, and in the aftermath realizes that he needs a break and is granted leave from the Questura. His wife, Paola, urges him to spend time at a villa owned by a wealthy relative on Sant’Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the laguna. There he passes his nights reading Pliny’s Natural History and his days rowing with the villa’s caretaker, Davide Casati, who is seeking the reason his bee colonies in the laguna are suffering. The recuperative stay goes according to plan until Casati goes missing following a sudden storm. Compelled to investigate, Brunetti sets aside his leave of absence to understand what happened to the man who has become his friend, in the process dredging up dark memories of an accident and cover-up years before. Earthly Remains is quintessential Donna Leon, a powerful addition to this enduring series.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802127723
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Series:	Guido Brunetti Series , #26
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	171,097
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Donna Leon is the author of the highly acclaimed, internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery series. The winner of the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, among other awards, Donna Leon lived in Venice for many years and now divides her time between Venice and Switzerland.

Hometown:

Venice, Italy

Date of Birth:

February 28, 1942

Place of Birth:

Montclair, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., 1964; M.A. 1969; postgraduate work in English literature

Read an Excerpt

Brunetti hurried after Casati, who was walking towards a rope tied to one of the stanchions. As he reached him, Brunetti looked into the water and saw floating a meter below them an unpainted puparin, the wood glowing in the sun. Closest kin to the gondola, though a bit shorter, the puparin was Brunetti's favorite rowing boat, responsive and light in the water; he had never seen a lovelier one than this. Even the cross board glowed in the light, almost as though Casati had given it a quick polish before he left the boat.

Casati set the suitcase on the riva and crouched down at the edge. For a moment, Brunetti thought he was going to jump down into the boat, as if a young man's stunt would show Brunetti who was the real boatman. Instead, Casati sat on the riva, put one hand, palm flat, on the pavement and hopped down into the boat. He steadied himself before reaching up towards the suitcase. Brunetti moved fast and handed it to him, sat on the riva, judged the distance, and stepped down onto the horizontal board that spanned the boat.

Involuntarily, it escaped Brunetti, "My God, she's beautiful." He couldn't stop his right hand from running along the top board that ran along the side, delighting in its cool smoothness. Looking back at Casati, he asked, "Who built her?"

"I did," he answered. "But that was a long time ago."

Brunetti said nothing in reply, busy studying the lines where the boards were invisibly caulked together, the hull's gentle curve to the right, the floor planking that showed no sign of moisture or dirt.

"Complimenti," Brunetti said, turning away to face forward. He heard noises from behind, then Casati asked him to haul in the rubber tire that served as a buffer between the side of the boat and the stone wall. When Brunetti turned again, he saw Casati pull in the second tire and set it on the bottom of the boat, next to a piece of iron grating standing upright against the side. Brunetti faced forward again and heard the slap of the mooring rope tossed to the bottom of the boat, and then the smooth noise of the oar slipping into the fórcola. A sudden motion pushed them away from the wall, and then he thought he heard Casati's oar slide into the water, and they were off.

All he heard after that was the soft rubbing of the oar in the curve of the fórcola, the hiss of water along the sides of the boat, and the occasional squeak of one of Casati's shoes as his weight shifted forwards or backwards. Brunetti gave himself to motion, glad of the passing breeze that tempered the savagery of the heat. He hadn't thought to bring a hat, and he had scoffed at Paola's insistence that he bring sun screen."

Brunetti had rowed since he was a boy, but he knew he had little to contribute to the smoothness of this passage. There was not the slightest suggestion of stop and go, of a point where the thrust of the oar changed force: it was a single forward motion, like a bird soaring on rising drafts of air, or a pair of skis descending a slope. It was a whish or a shuuh, as hard to describe as to hear, even in the midst of the silence of the laguna.

Brunetti turned his head to one side, then to the other, but there was only the soft, low hiss. He wanted to turn and look at Casati, as though by watching him row, he might store the motions away and copy them later, but he didn't want to shift his weight and thus change the balance of the boat, however minimally.

A fisherman stood on the riva, looking both bored and impatient. When he saw the puparin, he raised his pole in salutation to Casati, but the heat rendered him silent as a fish.

They reached the end of the island and turned eastward, following the shoreline past houses and abandoned fields. Even the turning had been effortless. Brunetti watched houses and trees glide past and only then did he realize how fast they were moving. He turned, then, to watch Casati row.

Seeing the perfect balance of his motion, back and forth, back and forth, hands effortlessly in control of the oar, Brunetti thought that no man his own age or younger would be able to row like this because he would spoil it by showing off. The drops from the blade hit the water almost invisibly before the oar dipped in and moved towards the back. His father had rowed like this.

This was perfection, Brunetti realized, as beautiful as any painting he had ever seen or voice he had ever heard.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Earthly Remains:

A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Top Ten Crime Novel of 2017
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
National Post Best Books of the Year
An Amazon Best Book of the Month (Mystery)

“When she’s writing about her beloved Venice, Donna Leon can do no wrong. And Earthly Remains, her new mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best . . . [A] socially aware and intensely felt series . . . Leon . . . once again earn[s] the gratitude of her devoted readers.”—Marilyn Stasio, New York Times Book Review

“Donna Leon’s novels about Venetian detective Guido Brunetti never disappoint, and Earthly Remains is no exception . . . [A] gentle, elegiac tale.”—Adam Woog, Seattle Times (April’s Best Crime Fiction)

“As deftly as Leon weaves mysterious past and shocking present, this leisurely paced book’s greatest rewards, as is usually the case with her work, are reflective . . . [Brunetti] is, through thick and thin, great company—and a pretty good crime solver as well.”—Lloyd Sachs, Chicago Tribune

“You become so wrapped up in these compelling characters, that I think you could go through all 25 [Commissario Guido Brunetti mysteries] this summer . . . Each one is better than the last.”—Louise Erdrich, PBS Newshour

“Like the foregoing Guido Brunetti novels, Earthly Remains is a rewarding novel. The descriptions of the Venice laguna and its islands are enticing, the character of Guido is drawn with finer detail, and the tale it tells is of the most serious import.”—Washington Times

“Donna Leon introduced Commissario Guido Brunetti in 1992’s Death at La Fenice, and readers around the globe have been grateful ever since . . . [In] Earthly Remains . . . Leon masterfully weaves several plot threads and takes the reader through the labyrinth of Venetian life that has nothing do with sipping a cappuccino on the Piazza San Marco.”—Bay Area Reporter

“Reading Leon is like sitting down with old friends for the most satisfying of dinners, replete of course with well-chosen wines . . . Leon is a wonderful writer, the sentences as beautifully crafted as the puparin Casati’s father had long ago built. You feel the sodden heat of a Venetian summer, the crowds marching like ants across the Rialto Bridge, the sting of Guido’s sunburn and his rage at the corruption that ruins life for everybody. The Italians don’t know what they’re missing.”—Arts Desk

“Leon knows her world intimately, yet never overloads the reader with research. She shows only the tip of her iceberg, confident in the richness that lurks underneath. The cast is small but memorable. The square miles she covers are few but exploding with life—at least where humans have yet to quash it.”—Howard Shrier, National Post

“Leon’s multifaceted portrait of a man overburdened with human tragedy emerges forcefully here, as the lagoon itself, beautiful on the surface but containing the seeds of its own destruction, stands as a gripping metaphor for the bad choices and intractable dilemmas that infect us all . . . Leon[’s] . . . novels, with their unparalleled evocation of landscape and sensitivity to character, have attracted an audience that encompasses fiction readers of all kinds.”—Booklist (starred review)

“A vacation for your own soul.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Showcasing the stark contrast between Venice’s organic beauty and the decay that centuries of neglect and overindulgence have laid upon it, Earthly Remains delicately captures the tension that modern Italians face . . . Mystery readers who enjoy a little philosophical introspection are sure to love this latest entry in a delightful series perfect for fans of Henning Mankell or Louise Penny.”—Shelf Awareness

“Bestseller Leon’s enticing 26th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery . . . Along the way to the poignant ending, Brunetti develops insights into nature and humankind’s failure to protect it, as well as the nature of guilt and its role in a man’s life.”—Publishers Weekly

“The 26th entry in Leon’s outstanding ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti’ series is one of her best . . . Fans of Leon’s early novels will find much to enjoy in the depictions of Venice and of the loving relationship between Brunetti and his family.”—Library Journal

“Step into the gondola and glide along the romantic Venetian canals . . . Another extraordinary adventure with Commissario Brunetti.”—AudioFile

“Earthly Remains, the 26th installment of this quietly beloved series, is the best of a wonderful lot . . . Leon’s character development and scene-setting are so strong and interesting that the story just moves right along without a bump or hitch . . . There are few reading joys that equal cracking the binding of a new Leon novel and experiencing another meeting with Brunetti . . . If you have not experienced this world, so exotic and yet so familiar, you can pick up literally any volume in the series and begin a comfortable entry into Brunetti’s Venice. Earthly Remains, however, would be a superlative place to start.”—BookReporter.com

“[Leon] delivers a twist on the mystery formula. Another great read, filled with the atmospheric delights of the region.”—Brenda Repland, Eyes on World Cultures

From the Publisher

Twenty-six novels ago, Donna Leon, who grew up in New Jersey, stumbled upon her life's work in Venice. "I was at La Fenice opera house back in 1991 with friends," Leon told me in a 2009 interview, "and we started talking about a conductor whom none of us liked. Somehow there was an escalation and we started talking about how to kill him. This struck me as a good idea for a book. It took about a year, and after it was finished it sat in a drawer because I've never really had any ambition. I was always pretty shiftless in my life. But I entered Death at La Fenice in a contest, it won, I got a contract for two books, then two more and so it went." Decades later, a shiftless Leon is hard to imagine. Aside from writing a novel a year, she has a doctorate in eighteenth-century literature and a passion for Baroque opera, with which she is involved as a writer and a company director. To her readers, of course, she is above all the creator of Commisario Guido Brunetti, the complex and empathetic Venetian investigator who remains the fulcrum of her series.

Brunetti first appeared in Death at La Fenice, where his presence seems slight — perhaps because the plot is one of Leon's busiest. An obnoxious conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, is found poisoned to death, and the subsequent drama unfolds with operatic brio. There is a tempestuous soprano, a vengeful wife, a horribly wronged mistress, plenty of nasty (as well as Nazi) secrets, and lots of good old comeuppance. Yet no player is a caricature and no plot twist is excessive. Leon's psychological acuity, sly wit, and artistic restraint both deepen and darken a novel that is, like all enduring crime fiction, a study of character as much as crime. And though the titles of Leon's three subsequent novels — Death in a Strange Country, Dressed for Death, and Death and Judgment — suggested a series that would proceed with mechanical predictability, the opposite has been true. Almost without exception, each installment in the Brunetti series is substantial and self-sufficient. For within the city of Venice and with a familiar cast of characters — Brunetti's wife, Paola, and her aristocratic family, his friend and colleague Vianello, his insufferable boss, Patta, and the incomparable Signorina Elettra — Leon constructs elegant dramas around dense matters such as political, military or Vatican corruption, the victimization of immigrants, organized crime, environmental crime, and even New Age hucksterism.

The action begins, invariably, with a body. "He latched his fingers around the strands and pulled gently . . . As he backed up one step it floated closer, and the silk spread out and wrapped itself around his wrist." This is Brunetti in The Girl of His Dreams, pulling a dead Roma child out of a canal. And here he is in Earthly Remains: "At first, Brunetti looked to one side of the rope, then steeled himself and looked at it and what was below: the top of a head, a shoulder, the other, and then the chest of the man . . . bobbing and turning in the water." The drowned man, David Casati, is an elderly widower, beekeeper, and fisherman who knew Brunetti's father. Casati is also the caretaker of the villa where Brunetti recuperates following an incident during an interrogation that makes him question his judgment and feel his age. "I can't stand it any longer, doing what I do," he confesses to his wife. Later, a doctor identifies Brunetti's ailment as "Your work. The need to do something when you can do nothing."

The physician could be addressing Henning Mankell's detective Kurt Wallender or, closer to home, Michael Dibdin's Venetian investigator Aurelio Zen. After all, what fictional detective does not despair? Certainly Brunetti, like his native city, is repeatedly engulfed: by sadness, by humanity. And never more so than in Earthly Remains, which briefly transports him to an idyllic island ("Brunetti awoke in Paradise") with Pliny to read and with Casati as his guide on the water. But even paradise is not what it used to be.

"Everywhere, we've built and dug and torn up," Casati rages. " We've poisoned it all, killed it all." His bees are dying. Soon he is dead, perhaps murdered. And Brunetti is back in harness, but for how much longer? Earthly Remains, for all its murkiness and skullduggery, is the most elegiac of Leon's novels; it feels like a farewell. In one scene, for example, Brunetti, Vianello, and Casati's bereaved daughter sit "in silence for a moment, three Venetians, relatives at the wake of a city that had been an empire and was now selling off the coffee spoons to pay the heating bill." Maybe so, but Leon will always bring this city back to life.

Anna Mundow, a longtime contributor to The Irish Times and The Boston Globe, has written for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, among other publications.

Reviewer: Anna Mundow

The Barnes & Noble Review

When she's writing about her beloved Venice, Donna Leon can do no wrong. And Earthly Remains, her new mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best. It's also one of her saddest, dealing as it does with the seemingly unstoppable polluting of the great lagoon.

The New York Times Book Review - Marilyn Stasio

02/13/2017
Bestseller Leon’s enticing 26th Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (after 2016’s The Waters of Eternal Youth) finds the Venetian policeman at headquarters one hot July day, questioning an arrogant lawyer accused of drugging a young woman he met at a party who subsequently died. When Brunetti has a heart seizure during this contentious interview, he winds up in the hospital. Prescribed complete rest, he later takes his wife’s suggestion of staying at a villa on a sparsely inhabited island in the Venetian Lagoon. There he befriends Davide Casati, the villa’s caretaker and a keeper of bees, some of which are mysteriously dying. Then, during a fierce storm, Davide disappears. Brunetti undertakes a search that leads to the discovery of his friend’s body and boat. Was Davide’s death an accident? He had been grief stricken since his wife’s death, Brunetti learns, and recently remorseful over the demise of his beloved bees. Along the way to the poignant ending, Brunetti develops insights into nature and humankind’s failure to protect it, as well as the nature of guilt and its role in a man’s life. Agent: Susanna Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2017
The 26th entry in Leon's outstanding "Commissario Guido Brunetti" series is one of her best. Here, there is an elegiac tone to the plot, as Brunetti is on leave from the force, recovering from an ostensible heart attack. But even the peaceful island of Sant'Erasmo in the Venetian lagoon is not immune to acts of violence, and Brunetti is drawn into the mystery of the murder of a man he's recently befriended. VERDICT Fans of Leon's early novels will find much to enjoy in the depictions of Venice and of the loving relationship between Brunetti and his family. (LJ 3/15/17)

Library Journal

2017-02-02
Commissario Guido Brunetti, taking two weeks away from the Venetian Questura for complete rest and solitude, gets both more and less solitude than he bargained for and about the same amount of rest as when he's home.An impetuous inspiration about how to save a subordinate from embarrassment ends up sending Brunetti to the hospital, where he's diagnosed with high stress and urged to take some time off. His thoughtful wife, Paola, comes up with the perfect retreat: a villa her aunt owns on the nearby island of Sant'Erasmo. Packing four volumes of the classics, Brunetti (The Waters of Eternal Youth, 2016, etc.) prepares to soothe his soul by doing something physical by day and reading Pliny by night. The something physical he prescribes himself is rowing with Davide Casati, the villa's 70-something custodian, who, to Brunetti's delight, turns out to be an old friend of his father. But Casati is haunted by sadness over his dead wife, a mysterious ailment that's killing the bees he keeps and loves, and a secret he's not willing to confess even to his old friend's son. "Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?" he asks Brunetti enigmatically, shortly before the Commissario finds him drowned beneath his overturned boat. It's an accident, of course, but Brunetti's keen judgment, which never takes a day off, is convinced that the timing of Casati's death is anything but coincidental and sets out to find—not the person who killed him (fans of this highly regarded series will know better than to expect much drama in this revelation) but the reason he died. Perhaps the most minimal of all Leon's mysteries, with no suspects to speak of and few details of the Commissario's domestic life or his eternal professional tussles at the Questura. Think of this barely-a-case as a vacation for your own soul.

Kirkus Reviews