Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

29 primary works

Death At La Fenice

by Donna Leon

Published 26 June 1992

The twisted maze of Venice's canals has always been shrouded in mystery. Even the celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death...but none so horrific and violent as that of world-famous conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer - poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. Even Commissario of Police Guido Brunetti, used to the labyrinthine corruptions of the city, is shocked at the number of enemies Wellauer has made on his way to the top - but just how many have motive enough for murder? The beauty of Venice is crumbling. But evil is one thing that will never erode with age.

Death in a Strange Country

by Donna Leon

Published 1 June 1993

Early one morning Guido Brunetti, Commissario of the Venice Police, confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid Venetian canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti, robbery seems altogether too convenient a motive. Then something very incriminating is discovered in the dead man's flat - something which points to the existence of a high-level cabal - and Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains to provide a ready-made solution to the crime ...

Dressed for Death

by Donna Leon

Published 1 June 1994

Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti's hopes of escaping the sweltering heat of Venice in August for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in a field in Marghera--a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. The victim appears to be a transsexual prostitute. Brunetti searches Venice--including the red-light district--for someone who can identify the corpse, but he is met with a wall of silence. Then he receives a phone call promising tantalizing information, provided he meets with the caller under a bridge outside of town in the middle of the night. This dangerous rendezvous leads to more senseless murders, but despite the danger, Brunetti remains determined to uncover the truth. Dressed for Death, the third novel in this international best-selling series is classic Brunetti.

Death and Judgment

by Donna Leon

Published 1 July 1996

In Death and Judgment, the fourth novel in Donna Leon's best selling Commissario Guido Brunetti series, a truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite Mountains. Meanwhile, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train bound for Venice. Brunetti suspects a connection between the two tragedies. Digging deep for an answer, he stumbles upon a seedy Venetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches far beyond the laguna. But it will take another violent death in Venice before Brunetti and his colleagues can get to the bottom of what is behind the horrific events.

Acqua Alta

by Donna Leon

Published 26 April 1996

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.

Quietly in Their Sleep

by Donna Leon

Published 1 September 1997

In the sixth book featuring Donna Leon's ever-charming and sympathetic protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nursing sister who has had five patients unexpectedly die and decides to leave her convent. In the course of his inquiries, Brunetti encounters an unusual cast of characters but discovers nothing that seems criminal. Is the nun simply creating a smoke screen to justify abandoning her vocation? Or has she stumbled onto something very real and very sinister--something that places her own life in imminent danger? A beautiful, suspense-filled novel, Quietly in Their Sleep is Donna Leon at the top of her form.

A Noble Radiance

by Donna Leon

Published 5 March 1998

A macabre grave is found at the foot of the Italian Dolomites. The body is found to be Roberto Lorenzoni s, only son and heir of one Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families. Commissario Guido Brunetti must move in the highest circles of power and corruption to unravel the mystery behind the young man s disappearance and murder."

Fatal Remedies

by Donna Leon

Published 4 February 1999

For Commissario Guido Brunetti it began with an early morning phone call. A sudden act of vandelism had just been committed in the chill Venetian dawn, but the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene of the crime is none other that Paola Brunetti, his wife. As Paola's actions provok a crisis in the Brunetti household, Brunetti himself is under pressure at work- a daring robbery with Mafia connections is linked to a suspicious accidental death and his superiors need quick results. But now Brunetti's own career is under threat as his professional and personal lives clash - and the conspiracy which Paola had risked everything to expose draws him inexorably to the brink. . .

Friends in High Places

by Donna Leon

Published 6 April 2000

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. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunetti at work, clearly scared and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is clearly going on that has implications rather greater than the fate of Guido's own apartment...

A Sea of Troubles

by Donna Leon

Published 29 March 2001

The murder of two clam fishermen off the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the island's close-knit community, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia. When the Vice-Questore's secretary Signorina Elettra volunteers to visit the island, where she has relatives, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concerns for Elettra's safety, and his not entirely straightforward feelings for her.

Willful Behavior

by Donna Leon

Published 28 March 2002

Mystery lovers everywhere are addicted to Donna Leon's ever-honorable Commissario Guido Brunetti and her portrayal of Venice's beautiful but sinister byways and canals. In Willful Behavior, Brunetti is approached for a favor by one of his wife's students. Intelligent and serious, Claudia Leonardo asks for his help in obtaining a pardon for a crime once committed by her now-dead grandfather. Brunetti thinks little of it--until Claudia is found dead. Soon, another corpse and an extraordinary art collection lead Brunetti to long-buried secrets of Nazi collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews--secrets few in Italy want revealed.

Uniform Justice

by Donna Leon

Published 6 March 2003

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?

Doctored Evidence

by Donna Leon

Published 18 April 2004

When the body of an wealthy elderly woman is found, brutally murdered in her Venetian flat, it is soon clear to the police that the prime suspect is her Rumanian maid, who has disappeared and is heading for Rumania. When the woman is approached by the border police as her train is leaving Italy, she makes a run for it 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 obvious forgeries. Case closed. But when the old woman's neighbour returns from a business trip in London, it becomes clear that the maid could not have had time to kill the old woman before catching her train, and that the money on her was not stolen. Commissario Brunetti decides - unofficially - to take the case on himself. As Brunetti learns more of the old woman's family, it becomes clear that this is probably not a crime motivated by greed, rather that the probable motive connects with the temptations of lust. But perhaps Brunetti is following a false trail and thinking of the wrong deadly sin altogether-

Blood from a Stone

by Donna Leon

Published 3 March 2005

"Commissario Guido Brunetti's fourteenth case may be his best yet." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing the fake designer handbags that the man was selling. The dead man is one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and trading without a work permit. Like everybody involved, Commissario Brunetti wonders why anyone would kill an illegal immigrant. But once Brunetti begins to investigate this unfamiliar Venetian underworld, he discovers that matters of great value are at stake within the secretive society. Warned by Patta, his superior, to resist further involvement in the case, Brunetti only becomes more determined to unearth the truth behind this mysterious killing. Reluctant as he is to let this event be smugly relegated to the category of "not worth dealing with," how far will Brunetti be able to penetrate the murky subculture in this illegal community? Blood from a Stone is an exquisite and irresistible mystery offering an unexpected take on life in contemporary Venice.

"A subtle and sophisticated mystery"-New York Times

"Stunning... Leon combines an engrossing, complex plot with an indictment fo the corruption endemic in Italian society." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Richly atmospheric, Leon introduces you to the Venice insiders know." -USA Today

"The evocative Venitian setting and the warmth and humanity of the Brunetti family add considerable pleasure to this nuanced, intelligent mystery; another winner from Venice-based Leon. Highly recommended" -Library Journal (starred review)

Through a Glass, Darkly

by Donna Leon

Published 6 April 2006

A luminous spring day in Venice, and Commissario Brunetti and his sidekick Vianello play hooky from the Questura along the Grand Canal to rescue Vianello's friend Marco, who has been arrested during an environmental protest. They get him released, only to be faced by the fury of the man's father-in-law, who owns a glass factory on Murano. The old man is seething with rage, and his daughter shares her fear with Brunetti that he will actually harm her husband. But it is not Marco who has uncovered the guilty secret of the glass foundries, nor he whose body is found lying in front of the furnaces which burn at 1400 degrees Celsius, night and day. The victim has left clues in a copy of Dante, and Brunetti must enter an inferno to discover who is poisoning the land and fouling the waters of Venice's lagoon. A man is dead - but will politics and expedience prevent the killer from striking again?

Suffer the Little Children

by Donna Leon

Published 5 April 2007

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned to the hospital bedside of a senior paediatrician whose skull has been fractured in a brutal attack, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men have burst into the doctor's apartment in the middle of the night, attacked him and taken away his eighteen-month old son. What can have motivated such a violent assault? As he investigates Brunetti begins to uncover a story of infertility, desperation, and an underworld in which babies can be bought for cash. Meanwhile, Inspector Vianello has uncovered a money-making scam between pharmacists and doctors in the city. But one of the pharmacists is motivated by more than thoughts of gain - the power of knowledge and delusions of moral rectitude can be as destructive and powerful as love of money. And certain information about one's neighbours can lead to all kinds of corruption and all sorts of pain...Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle and gripping as ever, set in a beautifully-realised Venice, seething with small-town malice.

The Girl of His Dreams

by Donna Leon

Published 3 April 2008

When a friend of Commissario Guido Brunetti's brother, a priest recently returned from years of missionary work in Africa, calls on him with a request, Brunetti suspects the man has hidden motives. An American-style Christian group has begun meeting in private homes in the city, and it's possible the priest is merely wary of the competition. Nevertheless, Brunetti and his wife, Paola, decide to go undercover. But when a girl's body is found floating in a canal, Brunetti must put everything aside to investigate the secretive world her people, the gypsies, who exist on the fringes of Italian society. Originally published in 2008, Donna Leon's The Girl of His Dreams is classic Donna Leon.

About Face

by Donna Leon

Published 1 April 2009

At a dinner party given by his parents-in-law, Commissario Brunetti meets Franca Marinello, the wife of a prosperous Venetian businessman. He's charmed - perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola - by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance. A few days later, Brunetti is visited by Carabinieri Maggior Filippo Guarino from the nearby city of Marghera. As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. He believes the man's death is connected to the illegal transportation of refuse - and more sinister material - in his company's trucks. No stranger to mutual suspicion and competition between rival Italian police departments, Brunetti is nevertheless puzzled by the younger man's paranoid behaviour. Eventually Guarino agrees to email a photo of his suspect, but by the time the photograph arrives, he himself is dead. Was he killed because he got too close? And why is it that Franca Marinello has often been seen in company of the suspect, a vulgar man with Mafia connections and a violent past?
Donna Leon's new novel is as subtle, gripping and topical as ever, bringing the sights, sounds and smells of Venice flooding to life.

A Question of Belief

by Donna Leon

Published 1 April 2010

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.

Drawing Conclusions

by Donna Leon

Published 1 April 2011

A young woman returns from holiday to find her elderly neighbour dead on the floor. A heart attack seems the likely cause, but Commissario Brunetti is not so sure and decides to take a closer look. Soon he discovers that she was part of an organization that cares for abused women and that her apartment was a safe-house.

Convinced that this is the lead he has been looking for, Brunetti begins his search for answers. But as he sets out to discover the truth behind her death, he is drawn into a decades-old story of lies and deceit that has blighted love and ruined lives - and has claimed this innocent woman as its newest victim. Brunetti's investigation takes him deep into the dark heart of his beloved Venice.