Author quotations: Donna Leon
Taken from Through a Glass Darkly, the following comment comes from an elegant and revealing exchange between two colleagues at the Questura in Venice. Both the conscientious and philosophical Comissario Guido Brunetti and the talented and discreet information-gatherer Signorina Elettra work for the impeccably dressed but spectacularly inefficient Giuseppe Patta.
When Brunetti needs information, Miss Elettra can always find it, and the scrupulously honest Commissario is careful not to ask how. Thus, in one of their cautious exchanges outside the social climbing boss's office, "She smiled with what a less astute person might have mistaken for sincerity."