The Jewels of Paradise

By: Donna Leon

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

Donna Leon has won heaps of critical praise and legions of fans for her best-selling mystery series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, one of contemporary crime fiction’s most beloved characters. With The Jewels of Paradise, Leon takes listeners beyond the world of the Venetian Questura in her first stand-alone novel.

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career elsewhere, mostly abroad. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Birmingham, England, as a research fellow and assistant professor. Birmingham, however, is no Venice, so when she gets word of a position back home, Caterina jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a once-famous, now largely forgotten baroque composer, have been discovered. The composer was deeply connected in religious and political circles, but he died childless, and now two Venetian men, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. With rumors of a treasure, they aren’t about to share the possible fortune.

Caterina has been hired to attend the opening of the trunks and examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions and a silent man follows her through the streets, she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold.

©2012 Donna Leon and Diogenes Verlag AG (P)2012 AudioGO

This is no Brunetti!

The untranslated Italian and unexplained references to places a sources mentioned is very distracting. The intrigues of the past were probably complete, but far too obscure to follow very closely, without further description and explanation, by someone steeped in Central European history and mores'

The involvement of the sister/nun is weak and not explored for potential richness by the author. If she had joined in by coming to Venice with her bags of doubt... We needed more intrigue in Venice. The son of the cousin episode was irrelevant because it meant nothing to the story.

Not Donna Leon's finest hour. We finished out of loyalty to the person that writes Brunetti.

Disappointing no narrator

Love Donna Leon but this narrator almost made me give up on this book. Her ‘Italian’ accent was so odd that it was almost comic! Very interesting story.

Amazing read!!

Filled with history, references to religion, politics, all the intrigues. Highly recommended! Keeps you guessing until the very end.

Not as good as Guido Brunetti series

Not my favorite Donna Leon story. The characters did not grab you and the story line seemed very contrived. I usually love her books but this one was not up to her other works.

Enchanting

For readers who appreciate a dip into the intrigues of the late 17th and early 18th centuries, this book is like a perfectly made dessert and a very good bottle of wine. Bravo, Donna Leon and Ms. Campbell.

I enjoyed it but but not as much as the Brunetti books.

The story develops at a slow pace and with a lot of scholarly details. However it did manage to draw me in. As with all Donna Leon’s books, there are a lot of details and reflective thinking. The ending is quite satisfying.

A "mystery" of a different sort, . .

While the Brunetti mystery's are slow paced, this stand alone was too slow for me to stay engaged. It is a book beautifully written, with Leon's elegant craftsmanship, but scholarly paced, which makes sense as an unravelling of a historical mystery to the protagonist scholar. While I do from time to time listen again to the Brunetti mystery's, I can't say that I will listen again nor recommend to mystery readers this novel. Those interested in historical fiction and the landscape of Venice will find it charming. Leon's subtle and dry sense of humor is present, which always makes me smile. Narrator, excellent.

Not up to Commissario Brunetti books

Very tedious & wordy. Not much story here.
The characters weren't interesting or complex. No interesting mystery or action. Even the food/setting descriptions were phoned in

jewel of a book

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I have followed Leon through the Brunetti series and--dare I say it--she and I seemed to be getting a bit tired of his problems. This new stand-alone, though, was a delight. There are all the same insider tidbits about Venetian life and the historical references woven into the story were superb. The reader Cassandra Campbell is clearly a fluent speaker of Italian and it showed; no halting pronunciations as have made me wince in other books. Leon is supremely understanding and forgiving about the foibles and obsessions of human beings and this wonderful quality is clearly evident in this academic puzzle focusing on Caterina and her sisters. Brava!

Jewels are what you make them.

The authors, true to form, twists and turns and delivers an ending as entertaining as it was unexpected. I generally like to guess the endings of stories and have to admit I didn't see it coming. In this way, she is true to form. It took a while to get to know and like - or dislike! - the characters, a burden not present in the Commissario Brunetti works, after the 1st couple, anyway. But now that I have, I'd like to see them, or some of them, again.

It's not a typical mystery, there are not heinous crimes to solve. But it is a mystery in that events of some centuries past come to dwell in the present in the form of two chests full of documents, and it's up to the main character, a scholar in the form and content of the documents, to figure out where the jewels are, and who owns them now after all that time.