Commissario Brunetti
5 total works
Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Questura is shocked to hear that his friend Brett Lynch, lover of La Scala diva Flavia Petrelli, has been savagely beaten. Then a man's body is found and a terrible confrontation awaits Brett in the Capra family palazzo.
Neither Commissario Brunetti nor his wife Paolo have ever had much sympathy for the Italian armed forces, so when a young cadet is found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy, Brunetti's emotions are complex: pity and sorrow for the death of a boy, close in age to his own son, and contempt and irritation for the arrogance and high-handedness of the boy's teachers and fellow-students. The young man is the son of a doctor and former politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics. Dr Moro is clearly and understandably devastated by his son's death; but neither appears at all keen to talk to the police nor involve Brunetti in any investigation of the circumstances in which he died. As Brunetti - and the indispensable Signorina Elettra - investigate further they are faced by a wall of silence, as the military protects its own and civilians are unwilling to talk. Is this the natural reluctance of Italians to involve themselves with the authorities, or is Brunetti facing a conspiracy of silence?
In this third novel featuring Guido Brunetti, a body is found so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches the city for someone who can identify the dead man and finds himself confronting another appalling and senseless death.
Maria Testa, better known to Brunetti as the nun who once cared for his mother, turns up at the Commissario's door. Maria has left her nursing convent after the suspicious deaths of five patients. Is she creating fears to justify abandoning her vocation, or is there a more sinister scenario?
Set in Venice, and featuring the charismatic Commissario Guido Brunetti, this is the fourth novel in Donna Leon's critically acclaimed series.