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Apr 29, 2013branch_reviews rated this title 3.5 out of 5 stars
The setting in Leon’s new book is still Venice, just as in the author’s well-loved Commissario Guido Brunetti detective stories. In this standalone novel, a musicologist, Caterina Pellegrini, who has specialized in Baroque Opera, jumps at the chance of leaving dreary Manchaster behind to return to her native Venice. She is offered a temporary job that involves scouring through two ancient trunks of papers that supposedly belonged to a seventeenth century Italian Baroque composer, diplomat and bishop Steffani. Two of his rather greedy descendants are making a stake for the inheritance and hope to claim “The Jewels of Paradise” hidden by the composer. The actual jewels themselves, retrieved in the end, come as a bit of a surprise. The plot unfolds slowly and gets a bit lost in a book is full of historical detail, musical research, the details of Steffani’s life and the reality and challenges of present day Venice. Readers who pick up Leon’s new offering might miss the detective Guido Brunetti and his wife’s cooking and the other familiar characters that people the author’s previous series. Reviewed by KB