The last case for Brunetti. During a cure, he befriends a beekeeper. When Brunetti discovers the body of the acquaintance, his criminalist instinct awakens and he is on the track of an immense environmental scandal.
A ten-year-old Roma girl is found dead in a Venetian canal. Brunetti goes to the encampment where she lived, but his attempts to speak with the community there are futile. When he learns who had befriended the victim and her little brother, he begins to understand the community’s silence. It also explains why he’s hit obstacles preventing the investigation.
When an illegal Albanian immigrant gives birth, she’s told that her baby has died and she should ask no further questions. Her personal devastation brings Brunetti into the world of child trafficking, where purveyors exploit a vulnerable population afraid to stand up for their rights. The horror continues when he learns how far in society the ripples have spread.
Brunetti confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young American is fished out of a fetid Venetian canal. Though all the signs point to a violent mugging, something incriminating turns up in the victim's apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy.
Brunetti faces an unsettling case when a young cadet has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. As he pursues his inquiry, he is faced with a wall of silence and finds himself caught up in the strange and stormy politics of his country's powerful elite.
As Venice braces for a winter tempest and the onslaught of acqua alta - the rising waters from torrential rain - Commissario Guido Brunetti finds out that an old friend has been savagely beaten at the palazzo home of reigning diva Flavia Petrelli
Commissario Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the construction of Brunetti's apartment years before. What began as a red tape headache ends in murder when the bureaucrat is later found dead after a mysterious fall from a scaffold.
During a performance of La Traviata at La Fenice opera house the distinguished German conductor is found dead, apparently poisoned by a cup of coffee. Brunetti embarks on a voyage of exploration in the often murky world both of opera and the victim's family, eventually unearthing a surprising conclusion.
The new owner of a farmhouse at the foot of the Italian Dolomites is summoned to the house when his workmen disturb a macabre grave. Once on the job, Brunetti uncovers a clue that reignites an infamous cold case of kidnapping and disappearance involving one of Venice's oldest, most aristocratic families.
Brunetti's hopes of a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in Marghera - a body so badly beaten that the face is completely unrecognizable. But when the victim's identity is revealed, the investigation takes a very unexpected turn.
Murder, Venice, relationships...it's a delicious concoction in the hands of crime novelist Donna Leon. Venice provides the backdrop for the lush film versions of the bestselling novels, which features the indelible Commissario Guido Brunetti, canal boat rides instead of car chases, fine cuisine and crime investigations in one of Europe’s most beautiful locations.