Цикл книг «Комиссар Брунетти» — 32 книги — стр. 2

When a body is found floating in a canal, strangely disfigured and with multiple stab wounds, Commissario Brunetti is called to investigate and is convinced he recognises the man from somewhere. However, with no identification except for the distinctive shoes the man was wearing, and no reports of people missing from the Venice area, the case cannot progress.

Brunetti soon realises why he remembers the dead man, and asks Signorina Elettra if she can help him find footage of a farmers' protest the previous autumn. But what was his involvement with the protest, and what does it have to do with his murder? Acting on the fragile lead, Brunetti and Inspector Vianello set out to uncover the man's identity. Their investigation eventually takes them to a slaughterhouse on the mainland, where they discover the origin of the crime, and the world of blackmail and corruption that surrounds it.

Both a gripping case and a harrowing exploration of the dark side of Italy's meat industry, Donna Leon's latest novel is a compelling addition to the Brunetti series.


Andrew Sachs is well known for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers. From a solid background in theatre, his work also covers TV, films and radio. His voice is often heard narrating documentaries and reading innumerable audiobooks. He has narrated several other Donna Leon titles.

When a body is found floating in a canal, strangely disfigured and with multiple stab wounds, Commissario Brunetti is called to investigate and is convinced he recognises the man…

Celebrated by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers, Donna Leon brings Venice to life in the twenty-second Brunetti novel of this bestselling series, where our detective must uncover the mystery. When making routine enquiries into a possible bribery case that could embarrass the mayor - a humiliation Vice-Questore Patta is very keen to avoid - Commissario Brunetti receives a call from his wife, Paola, who is evidently very upset. The middle-aged deaf mute with the mental age of a child who helped out at the Brunetti's dry cleaners has been found dead - an 'accidental' overdose of his mother's sleeping pills - and Paola is distraught by the news. To the neighbourhood he was just the 'boy' who helped out, but nobody knew much about him - not even his name. That a soul could have lived such a joyless life is too much for Paola to bear, and she asks Guido if he can find out what happened. It is a surprise to Brunetti just how little was known about this man-child - there are no official records to show he even existed. The man's mother is angry and contradictory when questioned about his death, and Brunetti senses that there much more to the story than she is willing to tell. With the help of Inspector Vianello and the ever-resourceful Signorina Elettra, perhaps Brunetti can get to the truth and find some measure of solace.

Celebrated by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers, Donna Leon brings Venice to life in the twenty-second Brunetti novel of this bestselling series, where our…

Библиотеку Мерула потрясает тревожное известие: американский ученый Никерсон вырезал и унес несколько десятков страниц из редчайших фолиантов XVI века. Детектив Брунетти выясняет, что помимо Никерсона в читальном зале находился лишь священник Альдо Франчини. Этот завсегдатай библиотеки, человек, который буквально жил книгами, — единственный, кто может пролить свет на эту темную историю. Брунетти решает поговорить с Франчини. Но священника находят мертвым. А в американском университете утверждают, что никакого доктора Никерсона не существует…

Библиотеку Мерула потрясает тревожное известие: американский ученый Никерсон вырезал и унес несколько десятков страниц из редчайших фолиантов XVI века. Детектив Брунетти выясняет,…

Поклонники обожали приму Флавию Петрелли, восхищались ее божественным голосом. Но больше всех Флавию любил некто, ставший ее ночным кошмаром. После каждого концерта тайный обожатель заваливал гримерку примы букетами желтых роз. Он крал ее перчатки и другие дамские мелочи... Фанатская навязчивость переросла в манию. Нападение на молодую певицу Франческу, близкую приме, стало первым предупреждением об опасности. Детектив Гвидо Брунетти, старый знакомый примы, решает ей помочь. Он уверен, что легко вычислит обезумевшего поклонника, так сильно жаждущего любви и внимания певицы. Поиски заставляют детектива изучить прошлое Флавии. Когда-то давно ее отказ запустил «принцип домино». Костяшки падают одна за другой, неумолимо приближаясь к последнему звену — Флавии. И если не остановить их, лепестки желтых роз покроют не сцену, а надгробье примы...

Поклонники обожали приму Флавию Петрелли, восхищались ее божественным голосом. Но больше всех Флавию любил некто, ставший ее ночным кошмаром. После каждого концерта тайный…

In Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series, the Venetian inspector has been called on to investigate many things, from shocking to petty crimes. But in The Waters of Eternal Youth, the 25th novel in this celebrated series, Brunetti finds himself drawn into a case that may not be a case at all.

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a nearby man, an alcoholic, who heard her splashes and pulled her out, though not before she suffered irreparable brain damage that left her in a state of permanent childhood, unable to learn or mature. The drunk man claimed he saw her thrown into the canal by another man, but the following day he couldn’t remember a thing.

Now, at a fundraising dinner for a Venetian charity, a wealthy and aristocratic patroness—the girl’s grandmother—asks Brunetti if he will investigate. Brunetti’s not sure what to do. If a crime was committed, it would surely have passed the statute of limitations. But out of a mixture of curiosity, pity, and a willingness to fulfill the wishes of a guilt-wracked older woman, who happens to be his mother-in-law’s best friend, he agrees.

Brunetti soon finds himself unable to let the case rest, if indeed there is a case. Awash in the rhythms and concerns of contemporary Venetian life, from historical preservation, to housing, to new waves of African migrants, and the haunting story of a woman trapped in a damaged perpetual childhood, The Waters of Eternal Youth is another wonderful addition to this series.

In Donna Leon’s Commissario Guido Brunetti series, the Venetian inspector has been called on to investigate many things, from shocking to petty crimes. But in The Waters of…

In Earthly Remains, the twenty-sixth novel in this series, Brunetti’s endurance is tested more than ever before. During an interrogation of an entitled, arrogant man suspected of giving drugs to a young girl who then died, Brunetti acts rashly, doing something he will quickly come to regret. In the fallout, he realizes that he needs a break, needs to get away from the stifling problems of his work.

When Brunetti is granted leave from the Questura, his wife, Paola, suggests he stay at the villa of a relative on Sant’Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the laguna. There he intends to pass his days rowing, and his nights reading Pliny’s Natural History. The recuperative stay goes according to plan until Davide Casati, the caretaker of the house on Sant’Erasmo, goes missing following a sudden storm. Now, Brunetti feels compelled to investigate, to set aside his leave of absence and understand what happened to the man who had become his friend.

Earthly Remains is quintessential Donna Leon, a powerful addition to this celebrated series.

In Earthly Remains, the twenty-sixth novel in this series, Brunetti’s endurance is tested more than ever before. During an interrogation of an entitled, arrogant man suspected of…

Детектив Гвидо Брунетти получает задание выяснить, кто из его коллег причастен к утечке информации из полицейского участка. Практически одновременно с этим знакомая, синьора Кросера, просит детектива помочь ей: ее сын начал принимать наркотики. Вскоре ее мужа Туллио находят под мостом с серьезной травмой головы. Брунетти начинает искать возможную связь этого происшествия с поведением мальчика. Детективу препятствует «крот», таящийся в участке. Блуждая в лабиринте противоречивых догадок, Брунетти следует в мир преступных сделок и мошеннических афер.

Детектив Гвидо Брунетти получает задание выяснить, кто из его коллег причастен к утечке информации из полицейского участка. Практически одновременно с этим знакомая, синьора…

"Your situation is always ambiguous, isn't it, Guido?," his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, observes of Donna Leon's soulful detective, Guido Brunetti, at the beginning of her superb 28th Brunetti novel, Unto Us A Son Is Given. "The world we live in makes that necessary," Brunetti presciently replies. Count Falier was urging his Venetian son-in-law to investigate, and preferably intervene in, the seemingly innocent plan of the Count's best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws this man would then be heir to Gonzalo's entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo's friends find appalling. For his part, Brunetti wonders why the old man, a close family friend, can't be allowed his pleasure in peace. And yet, what seems innocent on the Venetian surface can cause tsunamis beneath. Gonzalo unexpectedly, and literally, drops dead on the street, and one of his friends just arrived in Venice for the memorial service, is strangled in her hotel room--having earlier sent Gonzalo an email saying "We are the only ones who know you cannot do this," referring to the adoption. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo's life that ultimately led to murder--a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction.

Once again, Donna Leon brilliantly plumbs the twists and turns of the human condition, reuniting us with some of crime fiction's most memorable and enduring characters.

"Your situation is always ambiguous, isn't it, Guido?," his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, observes of Donna Leon's soulful detective, Guido Brunetti, at the beginning of her…

A woman's cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon's haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti novel.
When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding.
'They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no', Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently-deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him Brunetti softly promises he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. They discover that Fadalto worked in the field collecting samples of contamination for a company that measures the cleanliness of Venice's water supply and that he had died in a mysterious motorcycle accident. Distracted briefly by Vice Questore Patta's obsession with youth crime in Venice, Brunetti is bolstered once more by the remarkable research skills of Patta's secretary, Signora Elettra Zorzi. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman's accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region. But justice in this case proves to be ambiguous, as Brunetti is reminded it can be when, seeking solace, he reads Aeschylus's classic play The Eumenides.
As she has done so often through her memorable characters and storytelling skill, Donna Leon once again engages our sensibilities as to the differences between guilt and responsibility.

A woman's cryptic dying words in a Venetian hospice lead Guido Brunetti to uncover a threat to the entire region in Donna Leon's haunting twenty-ninth Brunetti novel.
When…

Transient Desires is Donna Leon’s thirtieth Guido Brunetti novel and promises to be a major publishing event for Grove. All of Leon’s recent Brunetti books have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List. Her previous book, Trace Elements , as well as The Waters of Eternal Youth , debuted at #10, and Unto Us a Son Is Given and Earthly Remains debuted at #12. Falling in Love debuted at #5 in hardcover fiction, her highest debut ever. By Its Cover and The Golden Egg both reached #7. Her books have sold over two million copies in North America, and in recent years Leon’s sales and critical esteem have only risen. These are fantastic books that just keep getting better. Donna Leon has been named one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers of all time by both Time and the Times of London. Leon has fans everywhere; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a close friend and supporter, as is Judith Martin, also known as “Miss Manners,” and Judith Flanders. Both Hillary Clinton and R.L. Stine named Leon as a favorite writer in the New York Times Book Review ’s “By the Book” section.

Transient Desires is Donna Leon’s thirtieth Guido Brunetti novel and promises to be a major publishing event for Grove. All of Leon’s recent Brunetti books have appeared on the…

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters

What role can or should loyalty play in the life of a police inspector? It’s a question Commissario Guido Brunetti must face and ultimately answer in Give unto Others, Donna Leon’s splendid thirty-first installment of her acclaimed Venetian crime series.

Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini, a woman he knows casually, but her mother was good to Brunetti’s mother, so he feels obliged to at least look into the matter privately, and not as official police business. Foscarini’s son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign: an optician, a restaurateur, a charity established by his father-in-law. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors—that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello, and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Exploring the wobbly line between the criminal and non-criminal, revealing previously untold elements of Brunetti’s past, Give unto Others shows that the price of reciprocity can be steep.

Brunetti is forced to confront the price of loyalty, to his past and in his work, as a seemingly innocent request leads him into troubling waters

What role can or should…

In the thirty-second installment of Donna Leon's bestselling series, a connection to Guido Brunetti's own youthful past helps solve a mysterious murderOn a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice's canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man's presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city's far richer sources of information: gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim. Curiously, he had been living in a small house on the grounds of a palazzo owned by a university professor, in which Brunetti discovers books revealing the victim's interest in Buddhism, the revolutionary Tamil Tigers, and the last crop of Italian political terrorists, active in the 1980s.
As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni, and Signora Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle--random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships--that appear to have little in common, until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.

In the thirty-second installment of Donna Leon's bestselling series, a connection to Guido Brunetti's own youthful past helps solve a mysterious murderOn a cold November evening,…