Donna Leon

The New York Times bestseller: “Venice shines through the pages of this novel. . . . Coupled with unexpected twists and turns [it] doesn’t disappoint” (Tulsa Book Review).
 
A Los Angeles Times Bestseller • A Library Journal Mystery Bestseller • A Booklist Best Crime Novel of the Year • A Crime...

"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,...

"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...

When the body of man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. Where was the crime scene? And how can Brunetti identify the man when he can't show pictures of his face? The autopsy shows a way forward: it turns out the man was suffering from a rare, disfiguring disease. With Inspector Vianello,...

Through the warm-hearted, perceptive, and principled Commissario Guido Brunetti, Donna Leon has brought us Venice in all its aspects. Now Leon returns to one of her signature subjects: the environment, which has reached a crisis in Italy. In Venice, with the polluted waters of the canals, the issue is significant. For Brunetti, it becomes so when an investigator from the Carabiniere, looking into the illegal hauling of garbage, asks for a favor. (Bestseller)....

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 for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than understanding this tragedy. The young man is the...

"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...

"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. From a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather's farm and its beloved animals, and summers spent...

At a fundraising dinner for a Venetian charity, a wealthy and aristocratic patroness asks Brunetti if he will investigate the fifteen-year-old attempted drowning of her granddaughter, which left the girl irreparably brain damaged. Brunetti's not sure what to do, but out of a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a willingness to fulfill the wishes of a guilt-wracked older woman-who happens to be his mother-in-law's best friend-he agrees. Brunetti soon...

Venice detective Guido Brunetti swings into action when the curator of Venice's most prestigious museum turns up dead, bludgeoned by a priceless artifact, and American archaelogist Brett Lynch, a close friend, narrowly escapes the killer.