Donna Leon

"Your situation is always ambiguous, isn't it, Guido?", his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, observes of Donna Leon's soulful detective, Guido Brunetti, at the beginning of her superb 28th Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given . "The world we live in makes that necessary," Brunetti presciently replies. Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend,...

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. Surprised, if not dismayed, to discover from his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, that leaks are emanating from the Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised more consequentially by the appearance of a friend of...

Attending a performance by an opera star he saved in Death at La Fenice, Brunetti learns that the singer is being stalked by an obsessed fan who subsequently attacks a fellow performer.

Caterina Pellegrini is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she's had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one. After nearly three centuries, two locked trunks, believed to contain the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered....

At the request of his wife, Commissario Brunetti looks into the death of a deaf, mentally disabled man who worked at their dry-cleaners and uncovers a mystery when the man left no official records and his mother is reluctant to speak to him.

In a mystery that offers an unexpected take on life in contemporary Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti plunges into the Venetian underworld of illegal African immigrants as he investigates after a street vendor is killed in a scuffle.

Commissario Guido Brunetti, with the help of Inspector Lorenzo Vianello and the ever-resourceful Signorina Elettra Zorzi, investigates the death of a Venetian widow in a Spartan apartment on Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio.

A socialite asks Guido Brunetti to investigate a murder that happened in the underworld surrounding southern Italy's garbage dumping grounds.

Under the stifling summer sun, Venice is flooded with tourism. Commissario Guido Brunetti is planning the perfect mountain vacation where he can catch up on his reading. However, before he can go, an old friend has him look into a court corruption case. As he probes deeper, Commissario Brunetti quickly becomes embroiled in a shocking murder case that is linked to his own investigation.

An investigation into the vicious murder of a transvestite takes Venice Police Commissario Guido Brunetti on a trail that leads him into a confrontation with the highest levels of the financial world, the Italian government, and the Church.