Andrew Smith's Reviews > A Refiner’s Fire

Book thirty three, in a series I feel I’ve been reading forever. The first book, featuring Venice based senior policeman Guido Brunetti, was published more than thirty years ago. The stories are as much about Venice and it’s unique culture as they are about a crime that challenges Guido in each episode. In actual fact, it’s sometimes rather difficult to spot the crime. In the course of this series, readers will have gotten to know Brunetti’s family and his colleagues pretty well; here, the focus falls significantly on Guido’s fellow Commissario, Claudia Griffoni.

So-called baby gangs, groups of youths in their early teens, have been clashing in the city. In effect, rival gangs have been communicating online with a view to meeting for a mass punch-up. Nobody has gotten seriously injured – yet – but it’s tying up police resources and drawing criticism from many sources. Then, one night after the arrest of a group of youths, Claudia offers to escort the last remaining boy home, the others having already been collected from the questura (police station) by their parents. Though this task is completed without drama, it is to draw retrospective criticism and pose a degree of threat for Griffoni.

Another of Brunetti’s colleagues is also having his problems: Enzo Bocchese, the quiet, almost reclusive, head technician at the questura. It seems he’s being bullied, a young man who lives in an apartment in the same building as the technician. There are a number of other issues occupying Guido’s mind, too, but none of any real consequence. This gives him plenty of time to slip home early for a meal with his wife and family or to simply put his feet up and read. There’s always time to stop for a coffee, too. Well, it’d be rude not to. Then, after a meal at his father-in-law’s palazzo, he’s able to stroll through the city with his wife and admire the beauty and tranquillity of this glorious place they call home.

The various threads here, some of which initially seem relatively benign, do eventually come together in what is actually an explosive ending. As always with this series, I was sad to finish my latest visit to this city, and bring to my visit to what I would now call my friends to an end. I miss these people and this place for eleven months each year, but I look forward to being reunited with them again – hopefully next year.

My thanks to Grove Atlantic for supplying a copy of this book via NetGalley in return for an honest review.