Friends in High Places
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Written by Donna Leon.
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Editorial Review (from Amazon.com)
Venetian cop, Commissario Guido Brunetti, wonders whom he knows to bring pressure on a local government department, to investigate the lack of official building approval on his apartment. But when that same official phones him at work, clearly scared by some information he plans to give Brunetti, and is later found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is clearly wrong, something with far greater implications than the fate of Guido's own apartment. Brunetti's investigations take him into the unfamiliar areas of Venetian life - drug abuse and loan sharking - while the deaths of two young drug addicts, and the arrest and release of a suspected drug dealer, reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venice to have 'Friends in High Places'.User Reviews (1) Login or create an account to write a review.
Dale Brayden thinks this book is Excellent.
Friends in High Places is the 9th in Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti series of murder mystery / police procedurals set in Venice. The book appears to be out of print in the U.S., but is readily available in its British edition via several Amazon merchants.
As with most of the Brunetti series, the story has much to do with government corruption. In this case the means of corruption is Venetian real estate, and the outcome is murder. There is also a significant drug connection, leading to the death of one addict, and indirectly leading to the deaths of 2 others.
This is one of the best in the Brunetti series, and the series is among the best I've read. Leon has great sympathy for the crime- and corruption victims, as well as for those honest policemen who investigate the crimes. The characters in this novel, and in the series generally, are not just believable, but fully fleshed-out, unlike the stick-figures in many of the crime novels I've been reading lately.
There are no neat endings in any of the Brunetti novels. Justice is always thwarted, at least to some extent. Brunetti always solves the case, but the people in 'high places' always win in the end. Such is the case in this novel as well, though in this case Brunetti finds a way to make Italian reality work for rather than against justice.