Lead Review

• Book: The Girl of His Dreams
• Location: Venice
• Author: Donna Leon

The Girl of His Dreams is one of a series of crime books featuring the detective Guido Brunetti. It has a story running through about a religious sect. A priest, who also has an interesting past, is concerned that the charismatic sect leader is persuading people to part with their money and even sell their homes.

The title of the story does not start until about a third of the way in, when the body of a young girl is pulled out of the Grand Canal. Here starts the investigation into what? A murder? A robbery? An accident? The girl with the fair hair is from the gypsy encampment on the mainland. Here you get an understanding of the nomadic way of life and how they try to live outside the rules.

Brunetti is a compassionate character who despite ‘orders’ wants to find out what happened to the little girl. I am not familiar with the Brunetti character and this book did not really give me much more depth to him. Perhaps if I had read this series of books in order I would feel I knew him better.

You will recognise the names of Venice and I could picture the vaporetti on the Grand Canal. The Girl of His Dreams gives you a glimpse of living in Venice and the fact that Brunetti does not like driving, reminds you of the magical waterways.

A personal view, I would recommend that if you have not read any of Donna Leon’s series of Brunetti crime books that you start at the first. I struggled to really connect with the characters and it was a slow start. However, I did picture beautiful Venice which brought back wonderful memories of my many holidays there. – Ann Reddy via TripFiction –

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