Books by Donna Leon

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.

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.