WANDERING THROUGH LIFE

This brief, chatty memoir by the author of the bestselling Guido Brunetti mysteries earns its title.

Leon’s approach to autobiography is pretty much the opposite of what readers may expect from the author of a successful series of whodunits. “I am feckless and unthinking by nature and have never planned more than the first step in anything I’ve done,” she announces early on, and then proceeds to illustrate this proposition by one charming non sequitur after another. After brief chapters on her family, she turns to more or less disconnected anecdotes and discussions—e.g., the tomato-selling scam she ran as a young woman; a detailed description of $audiopoly, a “Bored Game” she developed with two friends to break the tedium of work they’d taken in Saudi Arabia; and recurring salutes to the music of Handel (“He’s given me endless pleasure, and I shall continue to give him what he deserves: endless love”). The structure that emerges from these memories, which clearly bring Leon joy, is not so much episodic as essayistic. The author repeatedly avoids or understates obvious turning points like her decision not to pursue an academic career (though the reason she gives in passing is highly amusing), her professional activities, and her decision to move to Italy and then to leave 25 years later. Apart from her story about the fascination with honeybees that inspired one of Brunetti’s most memorable cases, fans will search these pages in vain for any hint of her writing process. Her tone throughout, lacking both the delicacy and the gravitas of her detective stories, is so cheerfully self-deprecating that it seems especially odd that she takes time out twice to assure the readers she invites into her world—but rarely into her mind—that she’s never used drugs.

Delightfully approachable but disappointingly unrevealing.