Commissario Brunetti becomes embroiled in religion

• Book: The Death of Faith
• Location: Venice
• Author: Donna Leon

Review Author: Mary Loosemore

Commissario Brunetti is visited by Maria Testa, who he knows better as Suor’Immacolata of the Order of the Sacred Cross and the care home where Brunetti’s mother lives. The former nun has walked out of the care home and abandoned the church in response her Mother Superior’s surprising reaction to the – to Maria Testa – suspicious deaths of five wealthy, elderly residents/patients.

Back home, Brunetti finds himself questioning his own views on the Roman Catholic church when his children reveal Padre Luciano, the school’s religious instructor and confessor, is well known amongst his teenage charges for requiring sexually explicit confessions and “saying nasty things”.

And then Maria Testa is the victim of a hit and run accident….

In all her Brunetti novels, Donna Leon’s evocation of Venice draws frequently on food – from family meals to snacks on the run and reviving coffees at all times of the day. In The Death of Faith, Brunetti’s investigations take him to the less touristy parts of La Serenissima and higher into the social and political realms than he’d like.

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