Robert Fulford on the Cultured Detectives

The beginning of his column in the National Post, June 17:

Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police likes to relax by reading Xenophon’s account of the Peloponnesian War. When his wife wonders why he never tires of it, he says that he always tries to forget the ending, so he’ll be surprised by either a Greek or a Persian victory. A police detective reading a Greek classic for pleasure may seem unlikely, but Brunetti is no ordinary cop. He’s the hero of the Venetian crime novels Donna Leon (pictured here) has been writing for two decades.

In one of her best, Friends in High Places, Brunetti talks about Xenophon, quotes both Samuel Johnson and François Villon and talks about Marcel Proust. When Brunetti remarks to his boss’s assistant that public corruption never ends, she says it’s sort of like reading Proust: “You think you’re finished with it, but then you discover there’s another volume. Then another one after that.”