Hustles, Hoaxes and Heinous Crimes - New York Times

The Venetian settings are enchanting and Commissario Guido Brunetti’s investigative methods are drolly amusing. But it’s the living, bleeding humanity of the characters that makes Donna Leon’s police procedurals so engaging. In THE TEMPTATION OF FORGIVENESS (Atlantic Monthly, $26), Brunetti comes to the assistance of Professoressa Crosera, whose 15-year-old son is taking drugs and whose husband suffered a brain injury after being thrown down the stone steps of a bridge. In his sensitive dealings with the victims of crime, Brunetti proves as much a psychologist and social worker as a cop: When the distraught Signora Crosera appears to be on the verge of a breakdown, he escorts her home and urges her to cook dinner for her children, “to show them you’re all right and life is normal.”

Despite the personal satisfaction Brunetti takes in his job, it distresses him that the cynical Venetians have so little use for their police force. “The contract’s been broken, between us and the state,” he says. “No one trusts us.” But Brunetti occasionally has doubts about the efficacy of the law, and at those times he’s likely to consult the classics. This time he reads Sophocles for inspiration about the ethics of breaking an unjust law. “I am doing only what I must do,” declares the unruly heroine of “Antigone,” a role model for Brunetti.

Tagging along after this sleuth is a wonderful way to see Venice like a native, especially since Leon takes care to give us precise directions for his routes. But Brunetti’s observations aren’t always pretty. The air pollution is beyond acceptable limits, and don’t even mention the pollution of the canals. Drugs are everywhere in the schools, even the private schools. Much of the “Venetian” glassware is made in China and the newspaper kiosks are full of junky trinkets. The once-bustling fruit and vegetable stalls of the outdoor markets are emptying out and half the fishmongers are gone. As Signora Crosera notes, “There’s nothing for Venetians to buy,” not when olive oil costs 15 euros for a half liter and the new shops are catering to tourists. “What Venetian wants a glass elephant or a plastic mask?”

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“I put people to rest. That’s my job.” Jim Zigarowski stands behind those modest words in Brad Meltzer’s new thriller, THE ESCAPE ARTIST (Grand Central, $28). As an undertaker at Dover Air Force Base, Zig works on “the U.S. government’s most top secret and high-profile cases,” including the fatal crash in Alaska of a small plane carrying the head of the Library of Congress, a close friend of the president. Whenever a person of consequence perishes in a disaster, the other victims barely get a mention — unless one of them happens to be Sgt. First Class Nola Brown, a decorated combat veteran who held the prestigious job of the Army’s artist in residence. Although Nola is more a notion than a character, Zig is a mensch, and when he realizes that the body he autopsied is not the Nola he knew as his daughter’s friend, he makes his own inquiries. Of more interest than this investigation, however, is the mortuary business itself, especially the respectful if elaborate procedures of military funerals like the one in which the president himself serves as a pallbearer.

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Whatever the British writer Clare Mackintosh tells you, don’t believe a word of it. Deception, misdirection, fabrication and fakery are the tricks of her trade, and there’s plenty of all that in LET ME LIE (Berkley, $26). After a slow and soggy start, the narrative picks up as it follows Anna Johnson’s efforts to determine why her parents chose to commit suicide, seven months apart, by leaping from the cliffs at Beachy Head, “a beautiful, haunting, agonizing place. At once uplifting and destroying.”

Murray Mackenzie, a retired police detective caring for a suicidal wife, is also fixated on this curious case, all the more so when Anna confides that she thinks she’s seen her mother — or perhaps her ghost. Many (perhaps too many) narrative twists and turns later, the mystery is resolved, but not before all the principals in this moody story have gone through their own private hells.

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It takes brains — and a quirky sense of humor — to pull off a clever crime caper like the ones Donald E. Westlake, the master of this genre, executed with such panache. Paul Di Filippo gives it an honest try in THE BIG GET-EVEN (Blackstone, $26.99), working with a motley crew of scam artists who team up to take revenge on a common enemy, a real-estate mogul named Barnaby Nancarrow. He’s a real jerk and deserves whatever he gets, so let’s not shed any tears when Glen McClinton, a disbarred lawyer and two-bit con man (“Bernie Madoff, c’est moi”), hooks up with Stan Hasso (“a crook with a certain code of ethics”) to hustle the tycoon out of $20 million. Stan has a plan that involves buying a decrepit motor lodge that comes with 500 godforsaken acres on a weedy lake. To pull off the swindle, the ratty resort must first be restored to a functional state — a chore so distracting that the men (and the women who clean up after them) wait until we’ve lost all interest before they even launch the heist.

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