Commissario Guido Brunetti returns with a gripping and powerful case about the murkiness of
power and a test of loyalties When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in
one of Venice's campi the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido
Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man Monforte for a job he discovers
that Monforte might not be such a hero after all. This seeming contradiction and a brutal
attack on one of Brunetti's colleagues by a possible gang member concentrate Brunetti's
attentions. Soon he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte's past culminating in
a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption. A Refiner's Fire is Donna
Leon at her very best: an elegant sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become
richer with each book and who constantly interrogates the ambiguity between moral and legal
justice.
