Transient Desires by

Transient Desires (The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mysteries, #30)

In his many years as a commissario, Guido Brunetti has seen all manner of crime and known intuitively how to navigate the various pathways in his native city, Venice, to discover the person responsible. Now, in the thirtieth novel in Donna Leon's masterful series, he faces a heinous crime committed outside his jurisdiction. He is drawn in innocently enough: two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Brunetti's curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. If the injuries were the result of an accident, why did they want to avoid association with it?

As Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, investigate the incident, they discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. To get to the bottom of what proves to be a gut-wrenching case, Brunetti needs to enlist the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.

Donna Leon's thirtieth Brunetti novel is as powerful as any she has written, testing Brunetti to his limits, forcing him to listen very carefully for the truth.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Transient Desires is the 30th outing for Commisario Brunetti & co. by Donna Leon. Due out 9th March 2021 from Grove Atlantic on their Atlantic Monthly Press imprint, it's 288 pages and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

As always, this series is wonderfully relevant, with deeply considered and nuanced philosophy, characters who really live and breathe and who aren't complete paragons or evil caricatures. Leon is certainly one of the deftest writers currently writing and her novels are a joy to read.

Although some interactions between Brunetti and his colleagues and family will resonate more deeply with long time fans, this book works perfectly well as a standalone (but I recommend the whole series - it's wonderful). The author is adept at providing enough backstory to keep new readers engaged and current without info-dumping. I love his interactions with his colleagues and especially with his family - always loving, always philosophical. His children are growing up and approaching young adulthood. Their questions (especially his daughter's philosophical probing) had me nodding along in sympathy with Brunetti's occasionally fraught conversational forays.

The inter-agency cooperations between the Italian Coast Guard, the Carabinieri, and the State Police (Brunetti's office) are impressive and faithfully rendered, complete with initial distrust and testing of one another. There's also a great deal of subtle local posturing and teasing between the Neopolitans and Venetians and the different local cultures which can cause friction.

The antagonist in this volume is suitably awful and the tension and plotting are, as always, top notch. My major problem with the book (which dinged a half mark off the final) was the absolutely car-crash *abrupt* ending. It. Just. Simply. Ended. It was so abrupt that I literally went looking for more pages (checked both eARC formats which I received for review - it truly does just *end* that abruptly apparently).

The language is relatively clean, a few minor swear words, nothing worse. Some of the themes (prostitution, smuggling, human trafficking, homophobia) elicit a world-weary resigned feeling from Brunetti and the official police, which some readers might find distressing.

Highly recommended for fans of procedurals. The whole series is worthwhile and one that I revisit regularly.

Four and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 6 March, 2021: Finished reading
  • 6 March, 2021: Reviewed