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The Jewels of Paradise, by Donna Leon
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Donna Leon has won heaps of critical praise and legions of fans for her best-selling mystery series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. With The Jewels of Paradise, Leon takes readers beyond the world of the Venetian Questura in her first standalone novel.
Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity.
The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered. Deeply-connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina’s job is to examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold. From a masterful writer, The Jewels of Paradise is a superb novel, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed.
- Sales Rank: #208735 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-10-02
- Released on: 2012-10-02
- Format: Kindle eBook
Review
"Fascinating. ... her first stand-alone ... boasts the same sensitivity to human behavior that distinguishes her Guido Brunetti series."--Bill Ott, "Booklist"
"A veteran mystery maven weaves present-day Venice into a 300-year-old puzzle in this engaging stand-alone. ... [The Jewels of Paradise] packs the charms of Venice into a smart whodunit."--"Kirkus Reviews"
"While it is undeniable strange to be wandering through Venice without the protection of Brunetti's solid presence, the young heroine of this novel is so winning that readers should find themselves forgiving the Commissario his absence. ... The Jewels of Paradise is as much a tale about a young woman wising up and learning to fight more effectively for her own happiness as it is a mystery--though the centuries-old secrets that those chests contain are also pretty compelling. Commissario Brunetti is allowed to take a vacation once in a while, but only if his replacements are as wry and erudite as Caterina."--Maureen Corrigan, "The Washington Post"
""The Jewels of Paradise"... shares some features of the Brunetti mysteries--Venice's mash-up of high and low culture, corrupt businessmen and Italian-style family squabbles. It also shares Leon's elegant prose, with humorous, wonderfully detailed descriptions as seen through the eyes of her heroine."--Jennifer Melick, "Opera News"
About the Author
Donna Leon is the author of the international best-selling Commissario Guido Brunetti series. The winner of the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, among other awards, Leon was born in New Jersey and has lived in Venice for thirty years.
Most helpful customer reviews
188 of 198 people found the following review helpful.
wait! where's the beef? (and the pasta and the gelato and the walks and the stairs . . .)
By Julia Walker
I love Donna Leon's books. I've loved them for 20+ years. And I was delighted that there was going to be a new character, a woman. Paola Falier is a character of/from whom I never see/hear enough -- mordant wit personified.
Caterina is no Paola Falier. She is the oddest combination of experience and cluelessness. She swans around various digital databases, but evidently can't imagine setting up the Italian equivalent of a gmail account. She loves Venice but conveys this with the catch-phrase "ridiculous beauty," substituting oxymoron for visual detail. What a cheat. And her voyeuristic interest in the family across from her window -- although it fits with her obsession about children -- verges on the deeply disturbing.
But _geeze_. This isn't a book; it's an outline. Certainly Leon knows the first rule of storytelling -- show, don't simply tell -- but she ignores it here. The composers >>> music get some detail, but not the living people. Venice -- even Venice! -- gets short-changed. We are told how ugly Manchester is, but there's not one single specific, not even about the rain. Ditto the food. The faculty dinner party at the beginning promised to be hysterical, but the author flipped us off with a few adjectives and an epithet or two.
The plot is an excuse for the music, and that would be OK if there were actually a plot; instead it's a collection of improbable circumstances. Things happen for 200 pages and then a thin, thin plot-let shimmers across the few remaining pages then things stop. I have two questions: if one famously rich and powerful branch of the Roman Church had the trunks for centuries and an even more powerful branch is backing this undertaking, why on earth do they need the farce of hiring a musicologist with 5 languages? Why not do the work in-house? This issue becomes an elephant-in-the-room of such enormous size that there's no space for anything else.
I planned to give it two stars, but my finger simply wouldn't click there for Leon's Venice. So.
As Sharon says above, I don't think I'm comparing this to the Brunetti novels. I think I just don't much like it.
(And clearly that has played havoc with my syntax. . . .)
31 August: OK, here's a PS about the intermittent Italian (see the comments after Sharon Isch's review)
At coffee with language-loving friends today I tried to tease out why I found it so irritating. Here it is:
Leon uses Italian phrases in 3 sorts of circumstances: as excited utterances (as they say on Law and Order), as carefully considered word-choice, and as pretentious filler. In the first category we find "vade retro, satana," (p 194) as Catarina gets shocking news about dark conspiracy. "Get behind me, Satan," roughly, and the context makes that clear even if Tina's horrified into in German hadn't preceded it. And no harm no foul if you keep reading.
Then there's the best usage, just on the next page (195): "She gave considerable thought to how to close the email and decided on 'Cari saluti, Caterina,' which, while being informal was nothing more than that but certainly suggested continuing goodwill." This parallels the on-going discussion of "lei" and "tu," which Leon actually deigns to explain, and is, I'd say, both in character and appropriate. And if you can't take a guess, it's a one-sentence paragraph, so you can go look it up.
Finally there's the third category, into which most of the sins fall. From the same section -- as she nears the end, Leon evidently feels less bound to English -- there's this on p 182: "You've probably read the phrase in the paper motivi futili." In addition to bad English syntax, "motivi futili" is both unnecessary and counter-productive. Cognates get you "motives" but "futili" isn't really "futile." (No, I looked it up.) BUT the worst part is, this falls in a conversation where the reader doesn't need to pause, to ponder, to pursue translation. This is like Leon playing with "Dell'alma stanca" -- ok, obviously a title or first line when initially used, but as she keeps at it, returning twice more to individual words, still sans translation, it's just annoying. And I know what "stanca" means.
I got tired of being annoyed. Furthermore, this generates resistance to the Italian that is acutally appropriate or even necessary. With these over-precious articulations, Leon reminds me of a student who comes back from a study-abroad term in the UK, his mouth stuffed with idiomatic Brit plums. Please.
I happily allow Dorothy Sayers an entire letter in untranslated French, a letter with the solution to the mystery, but I object to Leon's parole-dropping?
Well, si. And see: my finger found that 2-star rating after all. Sad.
43 of 43 people found the following review helpful.
I love Baroque opera, Venice and Donna Leon, but this book just didn't engage me
By IRG
As someone who loves (and knows more than a bit about) Baroque opera and who had thoroughly enjoyed all of Donna Leon's wonderful Inspector Brunetti books set in Venice, I was primed to read this new Leon tome. No, I wasn't expecting a Brunetti character equivalent in the world of musicology. But I was expecting the character enchantment and engagement that I had from the first pages of the very first Brunetti book.
Fifty pages in and I was asking myself how it was possible that this book was written by the same Leon who wrote the Brunetti books. The sentence structure, the style, the use of Italian phrasing (that required me to stop and look up the meaning as Leon provided none nor a context), the heavy-handedness with the research aspects of the storyline...the lack of interesting characters, particularly the main one, Caterina. I simply could not believe that this was written by the same writer who created and grew Brunetti. The same author who brought both ancient and contemporary Venice to life and explored a whole range of topics within the Brunetti series. And who made us feel as if we personally knew both Brunetti's work and real families. Vivid, interesting and never boring characters. (If you've read the Brunetti books, you know how well Leon handles the whole exploration of literature in them whether it's a discussion with Paola, Brunetti's literature professor wife, or Brunetti's own musings on various books. This is a marked contrast to how the music history bits are handled in this book. Night and day of difference and not in a good way.)
The theme of Baroque opera--including its history--could have been explored with a lot more intrigue especially in the hands of someone like Leon. I was bored reading the book, which felt, at times, as if one had just juiced up some research notes. I am studying Baroque opera at the moment and the textbooks are far more lively and definitely not boring. What can one say when someone as clearly skilled as Donna Leon cannot bring this theme to life?
I struggled to finish because I feel I owed it to a writer whose work I have loved for years. There are flashes of the brilliant Leon buried within but they are not enough to offset what is, sadly, a work that did not engage me. A work that had her name not been on the cover, I would never have known the author was Donna Leon. It pains me to even write this because we have been gifted with years of incredible work by Ms. Leon and for that I am grateful. I hate criticizing the work of an author I truly enjoy but not liking this book in no way diminishes the quality of her work or her success or her contributions (Long live Brunetti!).
83 of 93 people found the following review helpful.
Meanwhile, in Another Corner of Venice. . .
By takingadayoff
It's exciting to see that Donna Leon's latest mystery is a stand-alone, not one of her Commissario Brunetti mysteries.
In The Jewels of Paradise, the protagonist, Caterina, is a music professor in her thirties, in a dead end job teaching first year music theory at a conservatory in Manchester. When she's offered a temporary position in her hometown of Venice, she doesn't ask questions, she just jumps at the opportunity.
Everything about the new job is a little off. The institute she will be working at doesn't seem to have any purpose and the lawyer who represents her clients is a little too smooth, even for a lawyer. Her assignment doesn't seem entirely plausible - examine the papers in two 300-year-old trunks for clues as to which of the two claimants should get the contents.
The papers belonged to a composer and priest of the early 18th century. The parallel mysteries of how this little-known composer came to write such beautiful music and why the clients think the contents of the trunks might be valuable take place over a few days. There is little physical action in the story, but the dual mysteries play out with a pleasant drip-drip of clues and an undertone of tension and menace.
I got caught up in the story right away and was hooked right up to the end. Even though my limited opera knowledge comes entirely from Bugs Bunny cartoons, and the composer in question wrote operas, Leon made it all perfectly clear. And yet I think the mystery itself lacked the sophistication of the Brunetti stories, in which Leon usually highlights a social issue in addition to a murder and the ending is rarely neat and tidy. The mystery of the Jewels of Paradise was less complex and had what seemed an almost Nancy Drew-ish solution. This was at odds with the rather involved musical history of the composer, the non-fictional Agostino Steffani.
As much as I've enjoyed the Brunetti series, which started strong, weakened for a few years, and now seems to be back on track with the most recent books, I have mixed feelings about series mysteries. Writers and readers like having familiar characters to return to, but they often take over the books, which become less mystery and more soap opera about the regular characters.
Whether Brunetti has reached that point is a matter for discussion - meanwhile, Leon has taken a risk and that's good news.
Four stars for a refreshing change of pace. Leon has left her options open -- a new series, back to Brunetti, another stand-alone mystery, all of the above? In any case, I can't wait to see what Leon comes up with next.
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