Guido Brunetti mysteries

Beautiful and serene Venice is a city almost devoid of crime. But that is little comfort to Maestro Helmut Wellauer, a world-renowned conductor whose intermission refreshment comes one night with a little something extra in it--cyanide. For Guido Brunetti, vice-commissario of police and detective genius, finding a suspect isn't a problem; narrowing the large and unconventional group of enemies down to one is. As the suave and pithy Brunetti pieces...

The director of the Venice branch of the Bank of Verona is found dressed in drag and beaten to death, putting Commissario Guido Brunetti on the track of a large scale tax fraud and protection racket involving some of the highest men in finance, the government and the Church.

In Leon's fifth Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, the beating of renowned art historian Dotoressa Brett Lynch draws the contemporary Venetian police detective out of his warm and loving home and into the yearly onslaught of acqua alta, the torrential winter rains. Brett, an American who spearheaded a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, lives with her lover, Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala. With his open mind and good sense,...

"In a small village at the foot of the Italian Dolomites, not far from Venice, the gardens of a deserted farmhouse have lain untouched for decades. But the new owner, anxious for renovations to begin, is summoned to the house when his workmen disturb a macabre grave...Then a valuable signet ring is found nearby. It is the first clue to reignite an infamous cold case of kidnapping and disappearance involving one of Venice's oldest families. Only Commissioner...

Visited by a young bureaucrat concerned about the lack of official approval to build his appartment block years before, Venetian cop Commissario Brunetti launches an investigation when the man is found dead after a mysterious fall from a scaffold, drawing the detective into a dangerous underworld of drug abuse and loan-sharking.

"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."...

The body of an elderly woman is found in her apartment in Venice, and the prime suspect is her Romanian maid. The very afternoon of the murder, the maid is accidentally killed when she tries to cross the border to Romania. Commissario Guido Brunetti is the only one who believes her innocence and faces the challenge of clearing the maid's name and finding the actual killer. Brunetti thinks he has found a lead, but he may be tracking down the wrong...

Venice's Commissario Guido Brunetti calls upon his wife and daughter for help when it appears that Giovanni De Cal, a glass factory owner on the island of Murano, has allowed his anger over environmental protests drive him to murder.

Issues of religion and politics take center stage in the household of Venice's Commissario Guido Brunetti when he and his wife go undercover to investigate the possibility that a charlatan posing as a preacher has begun developing an American-style Christian sect in the city, and Brunetti's attempts to investigate the death of a gypsy child found floating in a canal are hindered by sensitivities to multicultural issues.

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.

The faceless man had bled to death. That much was clear from the autopsy. Who he was in life, however, would be more difficult for Commissario Guido Brunetti to determine. No one was reported missing and the victim carried no identification. But something about him strikes Brunetti as familiar--something beyond the rare disease that had disfigured this man's now-lifeless body. At the same time, animal rights activists are ramping up their campaign...

"One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem--the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn't...

Hired to investigate a suspicious near-drowning that left a girl permanently brain damaged years earlier, Brunetti struggles to determine if a crime was actually committed, in a case set against a backdrop of dynamic transitions in contemporary Venice.

An accident involving the father of a boy suspected of doing drugs finds Commissario Guido Brunetti pursuing a series of false and contradictory leads before uncovering a long-standing scam and unleashing unintentional consequences.