Peachy Reads

If you’ve ever read one of Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti mysteries, set in Venice, you may be interested in this collection of essays as I was.  If you’re expecting a love letter to Venice though, you may be disappointed as the “and Other Essays” part of the title represents the majority of the book, in which Leon covers topics as varied as her passion for Baroque opera, fat Americans, and an indictment of Saudi Arabian men.   Leon, in my mind, comes across as somewhat curmudgeonly, and like many expats, scrutinizes her country of birth with a highly critical eye. It sounds like this collection of essays was written less for her American audience and more for her UK or perhaps German readership. Leon has unapologetically ripped the rose-colored glasses from her face and crushed them underfoot, offering her unvarnished opinion of all and sundry. 

This is the second or third Bernie Gunther novel I have read, this one taking place in Berlin in 1938 when the excesses of the Nazis begin to boil over and their hatred of the Jews culminates in Kristallnacht.  Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich's Main Security Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and Sicherheitsdienst) reenlists Gunther in the Kriminalpolizei to investigate a series of murders of typically Aryan maidens, who are kidnapped and ritually killed in a manner that seems to suggest a sadistic Jewish plot.  Gunther's investigations uncover a plot that is anything but what it appears to be upon first inspection. What makes the Bernie Gunther series work is his skepticism and barely disguised disdain for the Nazi administration, and his attempts to work for justice in a society that increasingly devalues it.  The historical context of these novels is what fascinates me—there’s a lengthy discussion about the burning of the Reichstag, for example; a train le...