Donna Leon

"What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It's a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon's splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series. Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti's mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately,...

"Donna Leon's bestselling mystery novels have won a multitude of fans for their insider's portrayal of Venice. From family meals to vaporetti rides, the details and rhythms of everyday life are an integral part of this beloved series. But so are the never-ending influx of tourists and the suffocating corruption. Through it all, Leon's Commissario Guido Brunetti, a good man who loves his family and his city, has been an enduring figure, but in Earthly...

An accident involving the father of a boy suspected of doing drugs finds Commissario Guido Brunetti pursuing a series of false and contradictory leads before uncovering a long-standing scam and unleashing unintentional consequences.

The peace of a Venice library is shattered by the murder of a patron in the New York Times–bestselling series starring “a superb police detective” (Library Journal).
 
A Seattle Times Best Mystery and Crime Novel of the Year
 
One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out...

"When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. "They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no," Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises he and Griffoni...

Death at La Fenice, the first novel in the Commissario Guido Brunetti series, introduced readers to the glamorous and cutthroat world of opera and one of Italy's finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli -- then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor. Years after Brunetti cleared her name, Flavia has returned to Venice and La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca. Brunetti and his wife, Paola, attend an early performance, and Flavia receives...

A wall of silence surrounds a cadet’s death at an elite military academy: “Superb . . . This is an outstanding book.” —Publishers Weekly
 
Detective Commissario Guido Brunetti has been called to investigate a parent’s worst nightmare. A young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice’s elite military academy.
 
Brunetti’s sorrow...

With his hometown of Venice, Italy, beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Guido Brunetti's greatest wish is to go to the mountains with his family, where he can sleep under a down comforter and catch up on his reading. But before he can go on vacation, a folder with court records has landed on his desk, brought by an old friend. It appears that cases at the local court-hardly known as a model of efficiency-are being delayed to...

The internationally bestselling author of the Guido Brunetti mysteries tells her own adventurous life story as she enters her eighties In a series of vignettes full of affection, irony, and good humor, Donna Leon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned. Following a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather's farm and its beloved animals, and summers...

A sea of troubles. When the murder of two fishermen brings Brunetti to investigate the island of Pellestrina's tight-knit community, the villagers close ranks and say nothing. Eager for a chance at investigative work, his secretary Elettra goes to the island undercover. Soon after she arrives, Brunetti begins to fear for her life, especially after she falls in love with a fisherman who turns out to be the nephew of the main suspect.--Container. Death...