Donna Leon

As a rule I don't care for female writers...period. But once in a blue moon I fall over a gal who has what it takes. And Donna Leon is the latest. She writes noir. And I'm impressed.

What impresses me is how well she knows men and mobs. Her male characters act like men NOT Chazz Bono. She taught English courses to soldiers, stationed in Italy, for 25 years, then started writing hard crime books set in Venice.

Stoopid!

Donna Leon is an Italian(Venetian) crime writer - in English. Her knowledge of Venice is encyclopaedic and her plotting to die for.

Try a taste.

elfin_odalisque said:

Stoopid!

Donna Leon is an Italian(Venetian) crime writer - in English. Her knowledge of Venice is encyclopaedic and her plotting to die for.

Try a taste.

Click to expand...

She says she's from New York, dear. But you'd know better.

My two favorite forum clowns.

Donna Leon is American and she's a lesbian.

(I've read nearly all of her books and have enjoyed most of them. She can get dreary on occasion, though, and lays police corruption on obsessively heavy, even if true. After a while, it just crosses over into the slapstick. The same with Andrea Camelleri, writer of another Italian detective series--and a real Italian--whose novellas I also mostly enjoy.)

What? Does no one else here see how hilarious it is for JBJ to post that a lesbian knows how to depict men?

Or, for that matter, not laughing at Elfin once more stepping on her tongue in one of her idiotic "corrections"?

Everybody is right.

She's an American, born in New Jersey, but lived in Venice for 25 years. She writes in English and her novels have been translated into several language, but she won't let them be translated into Italian. At least that's what Wiki says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Leon

49greg said:

Everybody is right.

She's an American, born in New Jersey, but lived in Venice for 25 years. She writes in English and her novels have been translated into several language, but she won't let them be translated into Italian. At least that's what Wiki says.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donna_Leon

Click to expand...

That doesn't make JBJ and Elfin right, which is why they both are laying low on this thread.

Where JBJ goes off the track is in posting that a lesbian author can figure men out (obviously not knowing Leon is a lesbian) when all along he has nastily denigrated lesbians being right about anything--much less in knowing what makes men tick. (a major hee haw here. )

Elfin was just flat out wrong in "correcting" JBJ on Leon's nationality. It doesn't matter where she's lived or how long or what she writes about, she is a documented American--and is listed as an American author.

But thanks for bringing this to the top of the threads again.