About Face

About Face
by Donna Leon
Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. 278 pgs. Mystery.

Most of us have heard of the Mafia; not so many of an even older criminal organization, the Camorra, which emerges chillingly from the shadows in Donna Leon's newest Commissario Guido Brunetti book. The Commissario, surely one of the most appealing detectives of all fiction, meets a woman at a dinner party who is obviously the victim of plastic surgery gone bad. She charms him with her knowledge of Cicero and her willingness to talk books with a stranger. Soon his chance encounter with the signora dovetails with a case he is working on involving the illegal transport of garbage, and particularly of toxic and medical waste. Things escalate quickly. Good people die and are defamed; Italy's sordid criminal "justice" systems is exposed; business as usual goes on in a grim and frightening atmosphere. And yet, a rough and unlooked for justice makes the end of the story satisfying and the bitter of evil usually triumphant is tempered by the sweet of Brunetti's civility and intelligence and his enviable family life, all told in Leon's signature and exquisite prose.

LW