Bøger af Donna Leon

A woman's cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon's haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti novel

In the 27th novel in Donna Leon's bestselling mystery series, a suspicious accident leads Commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a longstanding scam with disturbing unintended consequences

When the body of an wealthy elderly woman is found, brutally murdered in her Venetian flat, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared. As the runaway maid's train is leaving Italy for Romania, she is approached by the border police, runs away, and is killed as she crosses the tracks in front of an oncoming train. She has a considerable sum of money on her and her papers are obviously fake. Case closed. But when the old woman's neighbor returns from a business trip in London, it becomes clear that the maid could not have committed the crime. Commissario Guido Brunetti decides - unofficially - to take the case on himself. As Brunetti learns more of the victim's bad character, it appears that the crime may not be motivated by greed after all.

"First published in Great Britain in 2008 by William Heinemann"--Title page verso.

"First published in Great Britain under the title The death of faith, Pan MacMillan, 1997."

"A stunning novel, the best of this brilliant series, with a twist at the end that will leave even the most sophisticated reader gasping."-Globe and Mail

From "the undisputed crime fiction queen" (Baltimore Sun), one of Comissario Guido Brunetti's most enigmatic cases: leading Donna Leon's iconic detective from the local dry cleaner all the way to Vienna's most elite aristocrats.Over the years, Donna Leon's best-selling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has conquered the hearts of lovers of finely-plotted character-driven mysteries all over the world. Brunetti, both a perceptive sleuth and a principled family man, has exposed readers to Venice in all its aspects: its history, beauty, architecture, seasons, food, and social life, but also the crime and corruption that seethe below the surface of La Serenissima.In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Commissario Guido Brunetti's wife Paola comes to him with a request. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry clearers has suffered a fatal sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing or helping him. To please her, Brunetti investigates the death and is surprised to find nothing on the man: no birth certificate, no driver's license, no credit cards. As far as the Italian government is concerned, he never existed. And yet, there is a body. As secrets unravel, Brunetti suspects an aristocratic family might be connected to the case. But why would anyone want this sweet, simple-minded man dead?

Internationally praised for her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Donna Leon's first standalone novel features a widely different but equally compelling sleuth, Caterina Pellegrini. Caterina 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 Agostino Steffani, a baroque composer have been discovered. Deeply-connected in religious and political circles, the composer died childless; now two Venetians, descendants of his cousins, each claim inheritance. Caterina's job is to examine any papers found in the trunks to discover Steffani's "testamentary disposition" of the composer. But when her research takes her in unexpected directions she begins to wonder just what secrets these trunks may hold. From a masterful writer, "The Jewels of Paradise" is a superb novel, a gripping tale of intrigue, music, history and greed.

When workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave, a ring found nearby proves to be a first clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice's most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues.

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a nearby man, an alcoholic, who heard her splashes and pulled her out, though not before she suffered irreparable brain damage that left her in a state of permanent childhood. The drunk man claimed he saw her thrown into the canal by another man, but the following day he couldn't remember a thing. Now, at a fundraising dinner for a Venetian charity, a wealthy and aristocratic patroness -- the girl's grandmother -- asks Brunetti if he will investigate. Brunetti's not sure what to do. If a crime was committed, it would surely have passed the statute of limitations. 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. Awash in the rhythms and concerns of contemporary Venetian life, from historical preservation, to housing, to new waves of African migrants, and the haunting story of a woman trapped in a damaged perpetual childhood, Brunetti soon finds himself unable to let the case rest, if indeed there is a case.

"A gripping first mystery, as beguiling and secretly sinister as Venice herself. Sparkling and irresistible." -- Rita Mae BrownThe first book in the internationally bestselling Guido Brunetti detective series in which a high society murder leads Guido to investigate the darker side of beautiful Venice.There is little violent crime in Venice, a serenely beautiful floating city of mystery and magic, history and decay. But the evil that does occasionally rear its head is the jurisdiction of Guido Brunetti, the suave, urbane vice-commissario of police and a genius at detection. Now all of his admirable abilities must come into play in the deadly affair of Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor who died painfully from cyanide poisoning during an intermission at La Fenice.But as the investigation unfolds, a chilling picture slowly begins to take shape--a detailed portrait of revenge painted with vivid strokes of hatred and shocking depravity. And the dilemma for Guido Brunetti will not be finding a murder suspect, but rather narrowing the choices down to one.