A Rare Mystery That Will Trouble Your Conscience - Rated 
Part of the appeal of mysteries is that we can enter a world of intrigue, evil-doers, and hidden secrets without any personal danger or discomfort . . . except for the occasional grisly detail. Donna Leon challenges that formula by raising a question of conscience in Fatal Remedies that will probably leave you squirming: I know it had that effect on me.
What would you do to stop a moral wrong that's being perpetuated in front of you? Unless taking a stand is unavoidable, most people simply ignore the whole thing. That's clearly not the case for Commissario Guido Brunetti's professor wife, Paola, who makes life difficult for everyone in the family by protesting in a violent way.
The moral dilemma is raised to another height when it appears that Paola's act may have had unintended consequence. After you finish this book, think about what you should do about the same moral dilemma with regard to something that's legal . . . but highly immoral.
By bringing Paola's personality into the story in greater ways, Fatal Remedies is enriched with a more interesting set of questions. If you are like me, you'll be especially amused to see how Guido reacts to moral issues about doing illegal things to bring wrong-doers to justice. You'll quickly see that there are two sides to the coin of does the end justify the means.
The ultimate mystery is solved in the second half of the book where the condensation does no harm to making a good story.
I listened to the unabridged Blackstone Audio version of Fatal Remedies that is read by Anna Fields. I recommend that you avoid this audio. Although Ms. Fields can speak quite good Italian as she demonstrates on the audio, she chooses to render the male characters in English as though they were from the country in the U.S. south. This style particularly perturbed me because I had thought of Guido Brunetti as a refined person based on his reading tastes and subtle handling of boors. He comes across in this reading sounding much like Dean Robillard, the NFL quarterback in Natural Born Charmers which Ms. Field also read.
the broken window & the dreadful consequences - Rated 
even when he wildly disagrees with his wife, inspector brunetti defends her right to her opinions - altho' it seems the consequences of her making a stand against sex tourism might come close to tearing them apart. some truly horrifying images for anyone with a spark of imagination - and bravo to donna leon for being the only author i can think of to tackle this subject!!
Decent, but nothing Great - Rated 
This is the first of Leon's books I've read, although it is apparently the eighth in her police procedural series set in Venice and featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. It starts off with a nice twist, with the Commissario's university professor wife deliberately breaking the display window of a travel agency she believes profits from sex tours to southeast Asia. Hers arrest and subsequent repetition of the vandalism/protest obviously creates a number of problems for the Commissario. Professionally he is placed on administrative leave, and at home husband and wife must face differing beliefs in the relationships between morality, law and justice. Then everything gets a whole lot more complicated when the nominal owner of the travel agency is found murdered. For reasons that aren't ever properly explained, the Commissario is assigned to lead the investigation despite the obvious conflict of interest. Non-Italian readers may just have to chalk it up as another Italian idiosyncrasy. That's actually one of the pleasures of the book-the way Leon subtly incorporates Italian culture throughout the story. Examples include the constant ducking into bars and cafes for drinks and snacks, highly flexible work hours, lengthy lunches at home, and the offhand banality of tax fraud. To fill out the Commissario's portfolio, there is a subplot involving the witness to a bank robbery and possible Mafia intimidation. The result is a credible, if not exactly dense, procedural built on several social concerns. One flaw is that one never really gets much of a sense of Venice from the book, it felt like it could have been any Italian city. The other flaw is the Commissario's repeated reliance on a uber-hacker secretary who provides him with all manner of data. She's a wholly believable character with unbelievable skills who's far faster and better than any real-life hacker. Those minor complaints aside, it's a diverting read, albeit unlikely to have me scrambling to track down the previous seven in the series.
A good series showing signs of running out of steam - Rated 
This is the eighth outing for Guido Brunetti and, as happens with crime series, one feel that's the author is running out of things to do with him. This book concentrates on Brunetti's home life as he clashes with his wife Paola after she commits and act of vandalism. Even the evocations of lovely Venice are not as powerful as they used to be. A slight disappointment.
RX for a murder - Rated
Donna Leon's eighth novel in her Commissario Guido Brunetti series is another crown of glory for this American writer. In "Fatal Remedies," Leon, ever the one to keep her readers' absolute attention riveted to all details, continues her intriguing mise en scene mysteries with sharp focus, clarity of detail, and powerful character observations. This book is well worth the wait. Leon begins with a new twist: Brunetti's wife Paola has been arrested for smashing the window of a travel agency which she knows arranges sex-tours to third-world countries where Westerners exploit, especially, the child-for-sex trade. This is an issue which Paola finds she cannot permit to go unnoticed, having two children of her own. Like Antigone, her sense of moral outrage at an issue the state does nothing about extends to the point where she takes the law into her own hands. Through her personal crusade, she hopes to call attention to this social canker and, with public outrage she hopes to generate this evil will be halted. She believes that she is prepared to take the consequences for her own actions. It is not so simple, she finds out. Unfortunately, she discovers that her own crusade has negative ramifications for her family and that instead of halting one injustice, she appears to be compounding another by hurting the ones she loves....Brunetti is called back to work and the chase begins. Brunetti, whose passion for truth, justice, equality, and respect for his beloved Venice, finds himself once again forced to confront moral and legal dilemmas. Leon is at her best and "Fatal Remedies" doesn't miss a beat as the pace picks up, page by page...Leon is not one to dodge social and contemporary issues, as her readers well know from previous books. Her views on environmental destruction (and how the Italian government and its citizens view the subject), social and political corruption, and such social issues as sex-tourism and the importation of former East Bloc citizens to work the local prostitution trade are readily identified. And the author is not timid in her criticism. It's not that she is indicting Italy and the Italians, but that these ills seem to be pervasive. Leon, an American, lives in Italy and knows the Italians well, but she has lived in other countries (and currently teaches at an American university at the Vicenza U.S. Army post) and is well versed on contemporary issues. And she loves Venice. Each of her novels tenders her feelings for the Most Serene Republic and readers cannot escape without feeling the life, the very essence of Venice, and her knowledge of that city's history and its ethnic origins make her books ring with a resonance that is real yet we know her story is "only a novel." In "Fatal Remedies," Leon counts on her readers to assume much (in fact, a first-time reader may be confused by references that are clear only from having read earlier works), which is a shortcoming of individual works in such series; however, as "a part of the whole" this book works well and contains all the ingredients Leon has so successfully concocted in the past. The publisher tells us that she is currently working on a ninth installment. Shall we count the days?
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