On a cold night shortly before Christmas, an immigrant street vendor is killed in Venice's Campo Santo Stefano. The nearest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares before his death - fake handbags of every designer label - but they have seen nothing that might be of much help to the police. When Commissario Brunetti arrives on the scene, he finds it hard to understand why anyone would murder an illegal immigrant. They have few social connections and little money; in-fighting among them is the obvious answer. But once Brunetti begins investigating this unfamiliar Venetian underworld, he discovers that matters of great value are at stake in the immigrant community.
Reviews
"From Brunetti's hapless quest for appropriate Christmas gifts to the wayward comments of his two teenage children around the dinner table; from Brunetti's colleague Signorina Elettra and her computer skills to his frustrating confrontations with his boss; from his warm-hearted conversations with his wife, Paola, to his musings on the impossibility of justice, we find evidence of a dysfunctional world paradoxically buoyed by its own mad excesses. In this wonderful addition to one of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever, Brunetti's realization of the impossibility of altering such a system is matched only by his need to try." The Washington Post - Paul Skenazy
"Commissario Guido Brunetti's 14th case (Doctored Evidence, 2004, etc.) may be his best yet-not that he'd see it that way himself. The murder is so commonplace that the victim isn't even dignified with a name. He's just the black man placidly selling designer luggage off a sheet spread at Venice's Campo Santo Stefano, his life ended by five shots fired by two equally unruffled killers who give every sign of being professionals. Despite the crowds of potential witnesses, nobody's seen anything, nobody knows anything, and there's no evidence of anything until Brunetti's painstaking investigation leads him to a box of salt with no reason for being in an empty house. Just as he's beginning to make real progress, however, he's abruptly warned off the case by Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, his complacent, incompetent boss. Maybe the reason is simple racism of the sort Brunetti's own daughter Chiara displays when she says dismissively that the victim "wasn't one of us." But maybe there are sterner forces behind the warning: interference from what Brunetti, en route to an understanding powerless to bring about justice, calls "governmental, ecclesiastical, and criminal" forces, reflecting, "The great tragedy of his country . . . was how equal they were as contenders."Leon's most adroit balance of teasing mystery, Brunetti's droll battles with his co-workers and higher-ups, and intimations of something far deeper and darker behind the curtain." Kirkus Reviews
Author Biography
Donna Leon has lived in Venice for many years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. 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, Through a Glass, Darkly, Suffer the Little Children, and most recently, The Girl of His Dreams.
