Quietly in Their Sleep (Commissario Brunetti Book 6)

Are some of the helpless elderly Venetians dying prematurely so the church can benefit financially? The truth is elusive as Commissario Brunetti attempts to uncover the truth, but finds his quest more challenging at eachturn. While following Brunetti's trail, we learn a great deal about several major characters.Each book in this outstanding series deals with different but major aspects of Italian life - finance, immigration,toxic waste, fishing rights, glass-making,tourism, medicine,private education , plastic surgery, horoscopes and through it all, the role the Catholic Churchplays in each life. I read a great deal, and Ms Leonis at the top of my list. Her writing is simply brilliant, and I await each new book with eager anticipation .Start at the beginning and watch each major character grow in depth. Highly recommended!

Donna Leon writes a good story, and she also writes well. There is a literary aspect to her work which is a pleasure to read. Her stories are not simple "who dun its". However, in this book especially, she allows her political feelings to show which is alienating to the reader. Her adamant opposition the Catholic religion expressed in each character, and the depiction of priests as scoundrels gets a bit tedious. Yes, there is much to criticize about the Catholic Church, but all organizations run by humans have their flaws, as do the humans who run them. Lighten up on your political and religious opinions, Donna and concentrate on more good stories.

This is a much earlier book about Brunetti as the characters are just beginning to develop. It was fun to go back to that time and see my old friends when they were much younger. I'm sure that I must have read this one some time ago, because I believe I've read them all. However, it added richness to go back and read it after such a long association. I was sort of like meeting the siblings of a good friend and hearing what they were like as youngsters. If you haven't read it recently, i recommend a reread, and if you haven't read any of these books, it might be a nice place to start. I can only tell you that they get richer and richer.

In Quietly in Their Sleep, Donna Leon’s intrepid Italian policeman, Commissario Guido Brunetti, receives a visit from one of the nuns who has been caring for his aged mother in a nursing home. He knows her as Suor’ Immacolata (Sister Immaculate) though she has shed her habit and appears panicked. She tells a confused story about a cluster of deaths in the nursing home which she found suspicious. Her efforts to question the circumstances of those deaths had been rebuffed by her Mother Superior and her confessor. Their response was to transfer her summarily to another nursing home where her suspicions were heightened. Even though there is no clear case for a police investigation, Brunetti feels compelled to look into the matter because Suor’ Immacolata had treated his mother with loving care and he perceives her as being unfailingly honest. His ensuing inquiry brings him into face-to-face conflict with religious fanatics, powerful officials in the Catholic Church, and, eventually, with his flagrantly incompetent boss, all of whom try to shut him down.Unaccountably, Donna Leon has lived in Venice for a quarter-century — unaccountably, because she has a pronounced habit of taking on one or another ugly aspect of Italian culture in each of the novels in the Commissario Brunetti series. Quietly in Their Sleep spotlights corruption and misuse of power in the Italian Church. Venal prelates, obsequious nuns, religion-obsessed laypeople, and even Opus Dei, a powerful right-wing Catholic secret society, all make appearances in this novel. Unfortunately, though the story is intriguing, the quality of Leon’s writing here is not at the level of the first five novels in the series. (Quietly in Their Sleep is the sixth.) The tale is simplistic and predictable. But I’m not giving up yet on the series. Maybe the seventh will be better.

I've become quite the fan of Commissario Guido Brunetti, his family and his coworkers, so much so that I'm working my through the entire Donna Leon series. She paints such a wonderful, realistic picture of Venice, Italy that, even though it exposes it's underbelly, it still remains a place for me to see on my bucket list. Having previously seen several foreign-language movie version of Ms. Leon's Brunetti books, it's conveniently given me visual references on the characters and locale. The odd thing is that the tv movies were in German with English subtitles but the characters did look Italian enough to be believable. Go figure.The earlier books are somewhat dated (Brunetti doesn't have a cell phone) but charmingly so. Crime is still crime, however, so the anachronisms are not too distracting. I highly recommend this series, especially for police procedural fans.

Donna Leon's mysteries begin deceptively slowly, with seemingly unrelated police inquiries coming together at the end; that, and their background of Venetian society, keeps this fan, who has visited Venice more than once, reading long into the night. There is one thing in this particular chapter in the series which puzzled me: Brunetti's apparent lack of interest in learning anything about Sassi, the man who took Maria in when she left the order and found her work, even when Brunetti was trying to find out whether Maria was a reliable witness. It seemed uncharacteristic of this usually thorough detective that he didn't ask Signorina Elletra to look him up on her computer. Who was that guy, and what motivated him to protect Maria anyway?

I am not bother with the writer’s obvious hatred towards the Catholic Church and all it represents. What I disliked was the dragging plot and when in picked up towards the end, the ending was just lame as if the writer lacked the bravery to see it through.

The story itself is up to Donna Leon's usual high standards, but the Kindle ebook copy is not!It would seem that publishers are releasing earlier works in a series by scanning existing paper copies, but not proof reading the resulting OCR. At least, that is what it looks like to me. There were so many errors, such as "hint" instead if "him" throughout this copy that it make reading the book a chore instead of a pleasure. It spoilt the fluidity of reading, especially when the spelling was so bad that I had to stop to work out what the correct word was from the context. I've seen better home scanned books than this and for something I've paid for, and hoped to add to my growing ebook collection, I'm am very disappointed and extremely annoyed at having paid for it. To get myself a decent, readable copy I will probably buy a second hand paper version and scan it myself. At least I can proof read it and make sure that it has no errors.If you want to read this book and enjoy it as it should be read, buy the paperback and avoid the Kindle version.Five stars for the story - zero for the Kindle ebook version. Unfortunately I am only allowed to leave one star.

I had already read this book, which I own under the title "The Death of Faith", published by Pan. Can Penguin really re-issue a book under a different title without informing the reader? I already considered this paperback to be pretty expensive, the price of a hard-cover, but I thought perhaps it would be extra-long or special in some way. So I feel doubly duped!!

If you do not enjoy the Brunettis' family life or the images of Venice, or even Guido's painstakingly recorded investigations and interrogations or even the company of the wonderful Signorina Elettera, then this will be a slow, almost inconsequential tale. You may, too, become a little irritated by everyone's ( Signora Leon?) vindictive loathing of religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular. Such hatred seems to fit uneasily with the otherwise warm and gentle attitudes of most of the main characters.Still worth reading though

This is an excellent read and the usual high class writing one expects from Donna Leon.I was looking forward to a good read but as soon as I started I knew i had read it before. Checking, I found I was right. It had been published years ago under another title The Death of Faith. There was no mention of this when the book was offered on Amazonand I feel that was a bit of a falsehood. I certainly would not have paid over £9 for a paperback I had read before.I feel I was duped

Once again Donna Leon has used her excellent English style to tell another mystery story involving Guido Brunetti. The story set in Venice (as are all her novels) sets the scene and then meticulously follows the events ythrough to a wonderful conclusion. This is another Brunetti novel which keeps the rteader involved and wanting to know what happens on the following page.I recommend these novels to anyone who has been to Venice - reading the stories is like visiting the place again and if a previous stay has been more than a week, the reader will readily feel that the description of Brunetti's movements is one which he/she can travel with the Commisario and so follow his trail. It's also a good way to learn a little of the phraseology of Venice!