Willful Behavior

A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

De: Donna Leon

Narrado por: Steven Crossley

Mystery lovers everywhere are addicted to Donna Leon's ever-honorable Commissario Guido Brunetti and her portrayal of Venice's beautiful but sinister byways and canals.

In Willful Behavior, Brunetti is approached for a favor by one of his wife's students. Intelligent and serious, Claudia Leonardo asks for his help in obtaining a pardon for a crime once committed by her now-dead grandfather. Brunetti thinks little of it - until Claudia is found dead. Soon, another corpse and an extraordinary art collection lead Brunetti to long-buried secrets of Nazi collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews - secrets few in Italy want revealed.

Death in Venice: investigate more of Guido Brunetti's cases.©2002 Donna Leon and Diogenes Berlag AG Zurich (P)2011 AudioGO

Italy with a British accent

Italian setting, characters and culture. With a British accent?! Narrator good — just a poor match. Doesn’t convey the nuances of previous stories with distractions of mispronunciations etc.

Couldn't stand the narration

Where does Willful Behavior rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Near the bottom.

What did you like best about this story?

Guido Brunetti.

What didn’t you like about Steven Crossley’s performance?

He was the wrong person to narrate a Guido Brunetti story. I have listened to every Guido Brunetti story and David Colacci is the man!!!!!!!!!!! Mr. Crossley reminded me of A HARD DAY'S NIGHT and HELP! It was just too much for me - I listened because I wanted to hear the whole story but I won't re-listen.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Not really - couldn't get past the narration long enough.

Any additional comments?

Of all the Brunetti books this is my least favourite and I'm not sure how much of that is OTHER than the narration. I'll re-listen to the others.

Slow start but...

strong finish to a classic plotline. Leon pulls it off again. A good read indeed.

British accent narrator

British accent narrator is really distracting

Fairly ambitious story with honor subtext. Good tale in the collection

Disappointing Narration

The story was okay but the narrator was distracting with his British accent. You would think he would at least learn how to pronounce Italian names and other words. Actually made it hard to follow the plot. I enjoy this series but will avoid any other books with this narrator.

Disappointing narration

The story is above average for this series. But Steven Crossley With his British accent diminishes this audio version. His narration gives no nuance to any of the characters and if you are accustomed tolistening to Donna Leon‘s books narrated by David Colacci, It is quite disappointing.

English Accent???

While the story was as enjoyable as all the Brunetti mysteries, the performance was awful. Listening to an English actor made me feel I was listening to a Agatha Christie mystery - certainly not a story set in Venice.

Not the same

The characters just doesn’t have the warmth and depth — the connections to each other that David Colacci brings. It was well done, I suppose, but I was so terribly disappointed it wasn’t narrated by Colacci that I couldn’t get past the first chapter.

Hate to say it

I love the series and each book ... I would have loved this if I had read it ... But the switch of narrators between this and the the prior ... And following books ... Left me un-enamoured. Continuity in voice, I've found, is so important when listening.

Terrible Choice of Narrator

The narrator is new (in my experience) to the series and was a poor choice. Everyone was voiced with British(!) accents and he managed to make Elettra sound simple and foolish. He didn’t even pronounce Chiara’s name correctly!

The story, like many in the series is really grim and sad, with no feeling of justice or resolution, but I kind of expect that from Leon/Brunetti. I would have given up on this one immediately but I really wanted to see what would happen next with Brunetti and Elettra after the events of the last book, but even that was disappointing.

I do think the narrator would be good for a book set in Britain, but I think he needs to stay away from Italy.