In Love with France, At Home In Italy

Dear Donna Leon, Today's "Guardian" published a list of the recipients of this year's MacArthur genius grants. I didn't see your name on the list, but surely that was an oversight. Had I been on the committee, you certainly would have been there.  As smitten as I am by the preternaturally decent Commissario Brunetti, I am loving the frankness of your "My Venice." I see that you've gotten plenty of flack for being "unapologetically opinionated" about loud, fat, ignorant Americans and more, but so what? Some of us try not to, but we can be that way.  As a musician, I love hearing about your passion for Baroque opera. The increased graying of heads among classical music enthusiasts worries me, too. Where I live in Italy, it's currently hunting season, a phenomenon at which you take deadly aim. I'm with you on that. I can't even conceive of preferring the sound of gunshots to that of Handel's  ...

I am not being fickle when I say I am in love with both these gentlemen. IT MAKES ME FEEL BETTER JUST TO KNOW THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE THEM IN THIS WORLD. Of course they're not really in this world at all, but since I've lived in Italy, they have become part of the interior world of my head. It's true that as an adolescent I went through a crime novel phase, mostly delving for the sex scenes ("And when she took off her clothes, I realized she was a REAL blonde..."). Yes, at age 14, I thought Mike Hammer in "I, the Jury," was a very sexy dude. But once I was a so-called adult, I never went near mystery lit. Until now, that is. I am currently pondering the mystery of how I fell under the spell of Donna Leon's Brunetti, whose "beat" is Venice. At first I resisted, since my heart already belonged to Commissario Montalbano, from exotic-to-me Sicily. But this summer I have worked my way through 22 Brunetti novels, and am already in mourning...