A REFINER'S FIRE

A tussle between two of Venice’s “baby gangs” leads Commissario Guido Brunetti into a tangled mystery whose extended reach would be remarkable for anyone but him.

After all but one of the teenage boys who’ve been arrested are released to their parents’ custody, Commissario Claudia Griffoni offers to walk home the last of them, Orlando Monforte, who’s afraid to call his father. The reasons why, Griffoni learns as the two of them stop for a pre-dawn cup of coffee, are obvious. As the Hero of Nasiriyah, whose actions saved two comrades from being killed by a bomb during their service in Iraq, Dario Monforte has high expectations for his son’s probity (don’t engage in gang fighting) and masculinity (don’t get caught). Although Orlando warns Griffoni he’s heard whispers from his schoolmate Gianpaolo Porpora that something big is in the offing, trouble next strikes elsewhere, in a murderous attack on Enzo Bocchese, the Questura’s chief lab technician, whose plans to sell most of his valuable collection of sculptures are upended by whoever breaks in and destroys them. In the meantime, there’s more whispering—but this time, it’s about Griffoni, who was photographed and identified at that coffee shop by someone who tipped off peerlessly shady avvocato Beniamino Cresti. Cresti, apparently acting on behalf of the elder Monforte, threatens to end Griffoni’s career if she doesn’t accept a restraining order that prohibits her from any contact with Orlando. As usual in Leon’s books, the mystery plays second fiddle to the characters and relationships from whom hints of secret misbehavior gradually coalesce into revelations as sordid and violent as you could wish.

Is all this really “the stuff of television drama,” as Brunetti fears? Only of a very high order indeed.