The Savage Garden

 by Mark Mills
My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Adam Strickland is a Cambridge scholar who has taken a slightly lazy approach to his studies. His professor suggests a trip to Italy to study a famous garden. The professor believes that this will pique Adam's interest.

Naturally, there is a secret in this garden, a cipher, and Adam also believes there is a secret to be discovered in the villa itself. His natural instinct or maybe nosiness in disguise soon leads him to some startling conclusions about both the recent and the centuries ago past.

I don't know if it could be called brashness or arrogance when he begins to delve into the personal lives of the occupants of the Villa Docci. He is definitely has no problems with blurting out his suspicions. As one person told him 'You have been here hardly a week! What business is it of yours?'


He certainly takes liberties as he toys with the rules of the house and the emotions of it's inhabitants.

Aside from that as he digs into the meaning of the statuary in the garden he has to use all his classical knowledge to piece together this enigma. The reader is educated as well as they are reminded of ancient myths and allegories. I am also tempted to read the book Adam was reading which was Dorothy Sayers' translation of Dante's epic poem The Inferno.

Friends in High Places

By Donna Leon.

One lovely Saturday in spring while lolling on his sofa and reading about ancient Persia, Guido Brunetti a Commissario of the Venice police gets a visit from a bureaucrat in charge of finding and recording changes made to historical buildings. The Brunetti’s apartment appears not exist according to the paperwork and this is just the first conundrum to be solved in this ninth mystery of the strong excellent series by Leon.

 A few months later Brunetti gets a call from this same man Franco Rossi. He is asking for help but before he can make his problem known he is found dead in such a way to suggest an accident. Brunetti knows better.

A side story is the problem with the drug scene that is now appearing and involves Brunetti’s boss’s son. Brunetti knows that if this boy should be punished, but he is aware that he would be signing his death warrant if   he proceeds to investigate, as he wants to.

Brunetti asks himself and his wife to speculate on how they have both changed since they were young college students when they were liberal and wanted to change the world. Now they are both increasingly disillusioned about how they adapt to the way things are and always have been in Venice.

This book is worth reading because of the strong writing of the highest order, and the way the lives of Brunetti, his wife and children are a part of the plot itself. All of us as we live in this world have to compromise and to do it and do the next right thing is the challenge. Brunetti does this well.