The powerful new Commissario Brunetti mystery set in a world of illegal immigrants and diamond smuggling.
Donna Leon was named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. She is an award-winning crime novelist, celebrated for the bestselling Brunetti series. Donna has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Donna's books have been translated into 35 languages and have been published around the world. Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Fatal Remedies, Doctored Evidence, A Sea of Troubles and Beastly Things.
The thoughtful and charming [Brunetti] is on top form . . . His
nicely balanced world . . . is cumulatively engrossing. In this
domestic detail, Leon roots the power of the ordinary, moral
individual
*Sunday Times*
Leon writes with great literary panache and evocative power about
the world's most beautiful and mysterious city
*Spectator*
Donna Leon has a wonderful feel for the hidden evils that lie below
the façade of the magical city, and Brunetti, sturdy family man and
cynic, is an endearing guide into the machinations of Italian
society
*The Times*
It would be simply perverse not to acknowledge [Leon's] skill . . .
The reader comes to look forward to Paola's elegant Venetian
lunches as much as Brunetti does . . . The plot of Blood from a
Stone both stands up to and complements the cast . . . Comfort
reading of the highest order
*TLS*
The fabulous Donna Leon
*Spectator*
In this stunning novel, the 14th to feature the dogged, intuitive Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti (after 2004's Doctored Evidence), Leon combines an engrossing, complex plot with an indictment of the corruption endemic to Italian society. The murder of an anonymous African street vendor, an inoffensive, possibly illegal Senegalese immigrant, explodes into a many-layered conundrum. Italian attitudes toward "Senegali" range from the bargain shoppers' approval of their harmless efforts to earn money selling knock-off accessories to legitimate merchants' outrage at competition from the cheaper goods. After Brunetti discovers uncut diamonds hidden in the victim's spartan room and evidence the room was searched, the Interior and Foreign Affairs Ministries take over the case and all of Brunetti's pertinent files, papers and computer disappear. Enraged, Brunetti sidesteps normal police procedures and taps into personal and professional sources, uncovering evidence linking the victim, the Angolan civil war, the Italian secret service and an industrial giant with government connections. Many of Leon's favorite characters appear, including the gourmand Brunetti's family, the obsequious Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and Patta's irreverent secretary, Signorina Elletra. They balance this dark, cynical tale of widespread secrecy, violence and corruption. Agent, Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (May 26) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
The thoughtful and charming [Brunetti] is on top form . . . His
nicely balanced world . . . is cumulatively engrossing. In this
domestic detail, Leon roots the power of the ordinary, moral
individual * Sunday Times *
Leon writes with great literary panache and evocative power about
the world's most beautiful and mysterious city * Spectator *
Donna Leon has a wonderful feel for the hidden evils that lie below
the facade of the magical city, and Brunetti, sturdy family man and
cynic, is an endearing guide into the machinations of Italian
society * The Times *
It would be simply perverse not to acknowledge [Leon's] skill . . .
The reader comes to look forward to Paola's elegant Venetian
lunches as much as Brunetti does . . . The plot of Blood from a
Stone both stands up to and complements the cast . . . Comfort
reading of the highest order * TLS *
The fabulous Donna Leon -- Antonia Fraser * Spectator *
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