Book Report: Wilful Behaviour

6. Donna Leon, Wilful Behaviour (2001) (3/7/22)

I broke my rule of reading all the Donna Leon books in order, simply because this book jumped into my hands (I may have taken it recently from a Little Library?) and then because I figure there's not that much character development in these stories—they're mostly about Venice, and it's already got all the character it needs—so I wouldn't be missing anything crucial. I was right. This book was right in the same mold as the last few I've read (#s 1–5; this one is #11), which means there's some good food, there's an interesting geographical feature or two, there's corruption, and there are likable (as well as a few not-so-likable) characters. And of course there's a murder that must be solved. In this case, there is also some history stretching back to WWII. And art.

I'm afraid I didn't find the motive of the killer very compelling—or, more to the point, believable. But as always with the Commisssario Brunetti books, the mystery itself is somewhat beside the point. It's the richness of Venetian society that is the pleasure.

Here's the only passage that I dog-eared:

He recalled . . . something he had seen with Paola [Brunetti's wife], it must have been four years ago. They'd been at an exhibition of the paintings of the Colombian painter, Botero, she drawn to the wild exuberance of his portraits of fat, pie-faced men and women, all possessed of the same tiny rosebud mouth. In front of them was a teacher with a class of children who couldn't have been more than eight or nine. As he and Paola came into the last room of the exhibition, they heard the teacher say, 'Now, ragazzi, we're going to leave, but there are a lot of people here who don't want to be disturbed by our noise or talking. So what we're all going to do,' she went on, pointing to her own mouth, which she pursed up into a tight, tiny circle, 'is make la bocca di Botero.' Delighted, the children all placed single fingers on their lips and drew their mouths into tight imitations of those in the paintings as they tiptoed giggling from the room. Since then, whenever either he or Paola knew that to speak might be indiscreet, they invoked 'la bocca di Botero', and no doubt thus saved themselves a great deal of trouble, to make no mention of time and wasted energy.