Monday, August 29, 2011

Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon

Somehow this one seemed a little more intense than previous ones. While Leon's stories tend to be rather dark, this one went beyond - or maybe it was just the subject matter. There are two story lines both involving corruption and abuse of position/power in the church.

In one, a priest who abuses little girls - and happens to be Brunetti's daughter Chiara's religion teacher - is found out and through family connections is appropriately dealt with. The other involves murder and madness and money and the Opus Dei and the bad guys totally get away with it.

In a departure, Brunetti is injured rather seriously by a crazy woman with a large knife. His recovery is complicated by a severe infection in the cut which is apparently the result of mishandling in the ER at the most charitable, and there are hints that the aforementioned bad guys arranged the malpractice with the intention of killing him since the crazy woman didn't finish him.

And after all that discription: the title actually works. It starts out with a report of a number of nursing home patients who died "quietly in their sleep" although they were at no immediate risk of death.

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