The Anonymous Venetian (called Dressed for Death in the US edition) is the third book in Donna Leon’s Brunetti series. It begins, just like the earlier stories, with the discovery of a corpse. On this occasion, the victim, a man dressed in women’s clothes, has been brutally attacked and left on waste ground near a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Venice. It’s outside Brunetti’s jurisdiction, but the summer is here and the other detectives are enjoying their vacations.

Working within the tight constraints of the genre and with the limitations that a series inevitably imposes, Donna Leon has a serious intention here, to uncover the conservatism of Italian society and how its judgements on sexual behavior further victimize the victims of crime. Brunetti has his prejudices, neatly exposed and confronted here by his more humane and sympathetic wife, Paola.

The novel shares too many similarities with its immediate predecessors. It was probably a mistake to read the first three novels in the Brunetti series back-to-back. The flaws showed up too clearly, flaws that might have stayed hidden or been less obvious if I had allowed some time to elapse between the novels. I plan to read more in the series, but for now I need a break from the Venetian detective.

The second installment in Donna Leon’s Brunetti series follows closely the pattern set in the first. The plot is not the priority. An American soldier serving at an army base in Vicenza is stabbed and his body dumped in a canal in Venice. Brunetti is assigned to solve a case that looks at first like a mugging gone wrong, but he soon starts to uncover much darker criminal and political shenanigans. Leon’s heart is not really in the whodunnit part of all of this. Her interest is in the character of Brunetti and, perhaps to an even greater degree, in that of Venice itself, and it is already clear that’s going to be the great strength of this series. Just as in the earlier novel, the resolution of the mystery comes along very late in the story and the explanation of the crime is hurried and unsatisfying. That doesn’t matter very much. Brunetti and Venice are getting more interesting with every installment.

The naysayers, cynics, and doom mongers got it wrong, as they often do. The Paris Olympics were a triumph. They city’s infrastructure held up well, the organization of the events was flawless, and fears about security proved largely groundless (apart from attacks on train lines just before the opening). Even the weather cooperated once the heavy rain that spoiled the opening ceremony passed through.

Paris was its usual elegant, stylish self, on show for the world to see. Away from the major venues (Trocadero, the Stade de France, Chatelet, and so on), the city felt quiet and even sleepy in parts. My favorite arrondissements, Montparnasse, St. Germain, and Le Marais, could be explored without crowds. With native Parisiens having escaped in huge numbers, but with almost all the restaurants and bars open for business, it was unlike any August I had ever spent in the city.

The spirit at the events I attended (soccer, tennis, athletics, and cycling) was inspiring and a perfect expression of what the Olympics stand for. Bravo to Paris, to France, and everyone involved in the organization of Les Jeux Olympiques.

Colin Barrett’s name usually appears on those lists that get published from time to time of up and coming Irish writers. The Irish fiction scene is thriving these days, so that’s quite a tribute. I read and enjoyed one of his earlier short story collections, so I was interested to see what his debut novel, Wild Houses, would be like.

It is an enjoyable yarn set in rural Ireland (Mayo, specifically) and its community of minor criminals. What distinguished it for me was the sensitive depiction of the central character, Dev. A gentle giant, bullied at school, mourning the death of his mother and the incarceration of his father in a psychiatric hospital, Dev lives alone and isolated in the deep countryside in the family home until the local gangsters come calling. Barrett communicates with real empathy and tenderness Dev’s trauma and the passivity that is one of its main symptoms. That, for me, was what made an otherwise unremarkable novel worth the time.

Great artists have always attracted coteries of hangers-on, sycophants, and spongers. The members of the clique that surrounded Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud in Soho in the 1950s and 1960s have attained a minor celebrity status without ever achieving much distinction or success of their own. Would anyone know or care about the likes of Dan Farson, Henrietta Moraes, Isabel Rawsthorne, and David Archer if they hadn’t pedaled stories, true or false, about Bacon and Freud or if they hadn’t had walk-on parts in the lives of arguably the most celebrated British painters of the 20th century? Probably not. But I would make an exception for John Deakin, the subject of Iain Sinclair’s “psychobiographic fiction” Pariah Genius.

Deakin’s reputation as a photographer has had a resurgence in recent years. That has helped to re-balance his legacy, or at least correct the one-dimensional portrait of him as a much disliked, scarcely tolerated drunk who sat for Freud and provided photographs for Bacon that became source material for some of his greatest portraits.

Iain Sinclair’s book is not a biography in any conventional sense. It certainly isn’t a critique of Deakin’s photography. The author and publisher describe it as a novel, only because, I suspect, there is no better way to categorize this unclassifiable, imaginative re-telling of Deakin’s personality and character. In the final analysis, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Just enjoy it – a characteristically ingenious and enthralling piece of writing from one of the most distinctive and original voices around.

After finishing Colm Toibin’s most recent novel, I looked at a few reviews to see what critical reaction to it had been and I was struck by how many reviewers referred to its “restraint”. It’s an important insight and one, it seems to me, that goes to the heart of the impact that Long Island makes. The main characters will be familiar to readers of Toibin’s earlier novel Brooklyn. Eilis Lacey, now married with two children, leaves her home in Long Island to make a visit to Ireland, ostensibly to see her aging mother but really to escape a crisis in her marriage. There she picks up a relationship with an old flame, Jim Farrell, a local pub owner. No plot spoilers here, except to say there’s not much of a plot and that doesn’t matter at all. Read Long Island for the brilliance of the characterization and the almost unbearable narrative tension that Toibin creates, but above all for the deep emotion teased out of ordinary lives with such poignancy, power and, yes, restraint.

Abroad in Japan is a simple enough account of Chris Broad’s decade living in Japan. What sets it apart from similar books is the affection and respect Broad clearly has for his adopted home. He avoids the default position many foreign commentators take when talking about the Japanese, the “they’re weird and wonderful” or “they’re impossible to understand” attitude that I’ve always found to be so patronizing and superficial. Broad has deep affection for the country and its people, has worked to learn the language and customs, and has put down deep roots. This is no travelogue, but a funny love letter to a country he has explored from top to bottom.

I have made 20-30 visits to Japan over the years and I have grown to love the country. I would never pretend to understand or know it well, because it’s a place that demands and repays deep immersion, but I enjoy returning there more than any other place I have visited. Some of that is down to its sights, its food, and its customs, but mostly it’s about the Japanese people – their kindness, hospitality, curiosity, and warmth.

I found reading Roman Stories a discomfiting experience and I think that is exactly what Jhumpa Lahiri wanted. The people in these stories find themselves in episodes of crisis, isolation, or disorientation. An expatriate woman waiting for surgery, an immigrant child minder forced to live in a different continent from her young son, another immigrant forced out of his home by his neighbors’ racist hatred, a lonely widow trying to make sense of a city transformed since her childhood. Everyone is sad, uncomfortable, angry, or alone. Rome, the author’s adopted home in recent times, is the setting for all the stories, and it’s not the Rome the tourists see. It’s a city in decline, a place scarred by graffiti and garbage, where the immigrants are mistreated and those born and raised there are uneasy and alienated.

There are powerful and poignant stories here (I liked The Procession especially), but I finished the collection feeling that many failed to make the impact the author intended. For me short stories require a sharpness of focus and a precision of expression. Something is lost in this most exacting of genres if the lens roams too freely. I wanted less, but the author always seemed to want to give more.

When Michelangelo moved to Rome from Florence in 1534 he was nearly 60 years old. He would have been considered an old man by the standards of the time. (Average life expectancy was around 70 years). He was to live another three decades, decades that saw him produce some of his most remarkable work. An exhibition at the British Museum, Michelangelo: The Last Decades, chronicles and celebrates this period. It’s not to be missed and, by the looks of the long lines outside the museum at opening time this morning, many agree with me.

The number and scale of the commissions he accepted in those decades would have daunted even a younger person. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to be his patron, and he found it difficult to refuse the various popes and noblemen offering him architectural and painting work. Little wonder that he took to preparing outlines and sketches that were finished by lesser artists. The magnificent drawings, mostly completed in chalk on paper, are the heart of this small exhibition, and looking at them close-up it’s hardly surprising that his contemporaries marveled at this “divinely inspired” talents. Anyone whose experience of Michelangelo has been confined until now to his vast frescos or monumental sculptures ought to beat a path to the British Museum and marvel at these wondrous drawings.