This is Spectator Radio, the Spectator's curated podcast collection.

Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Books Podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor for The Spectator.

This week I'm very pleased to be joined by the crime writer Donna Leon,

whose new novel is either the 27th or 28, Donna herself

can't quite remember, of her Commissario Brunetti series, and it's called Unto Us, a Son is

Given. Welcome, Donna. Now, you're an American writer, but you're an American writer in Venice,

and you've written all these novels about

of Venetian today. What does Venice as a sort of setting, first of all, give you, do you think,

as a writer? It gives the advantage, in a way, it's an aesthetic, moral one, that people are

prone to associate goodness with beauty, virtue with beauty.

When we see beautiful people, we assume that for some reason we don't understand, they're good.

And when we see ugly people, we sort of think they're bad.

And if you look at movies, you see this.

The heroine is always pretty, and the second woman, the temptress, is less pretty.

Venice is arguably the most beautiful city in the world.

And so the idea of presenting crime there is a paradox.

It's a conflict between beauty and ugliness, good and bad.

And I think that this is an advantage because people are prepared to be surprised.

This shouldn't be happening here.

Oh, things like that happen in Detroit, but they don't happen in Venice.

And yet in the books they do.

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