Bøger af Donna Leon

"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.

In The Waters of Eternal Youth, the twenty-fifth instalment in the bestselling Brunetti series, our Commissario finds himself drawn into a case that may not be a crime at all.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLD DAGGER AWARDThe latest bestselling Venice crime novel from celebrated author Donna LeonAs a favour to his wealthy father-in-law, the Count Falier, Commissario Guido Brunetti agrees to investigate the seemingly innocent wish of the Count's best friend, the elderly and childless Gonzalo, to adopt a younger man as his son.

In Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon's first novel in the Commissario Brunetti series, readers were introduced to the glamorous and cut-throat world of opera and to one of Italy's finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli - then a suspect in the poisoning of a renowned German conductor.

Granted leave from the Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti decides to finally take a well-earned break and visit Sant'Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the Venetian laguna.

When a body is found floating in a canal, strangely disfigured and with multiple stab wounds, Commissario Brunetti is called to investigate and is convinced he recognises the man from somewhere.

Step into the romance and soul of a Venice where murder and intrigue hide

He's charmed - perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola - by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse - and more sinister material - in his company's trucks.

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bedside of a senior paediatrician whose skull has been brutally fractured, he is confronted with more questions than answers.

When one of his wife Paola's students comes to visit him, with a strange and vague interest in investigating the possibility of a pardon for a crime committed by her grandfather many years ago, Commissario Brunetti thinks little of it, beyond being intrigued and attracted by the girl's intelligence and moral seriousness.

When Commissario Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years before, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant local government department.

The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia.

When a wealthy Venetian woman is found brutally murdered, the prime suspect is her Romanian maid, who has fled the city. Commissario Brunetti decides - unofficially - to take on the case himself.

On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a man is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. As Brunetti starts to investigate the murky subculture of the Venetian underworld, he discovers that life is cheap in the immigrant community and something of much greater value is at stake.

As Commissario Guido Brunetti watches his mother buried, he takes some solace in the cloud dappled sky, and the tops of the Venretian cypress trees, moving gently in the spring breeze.