Resultado de "Donna Leon" em Todas as categorias

Donna Leon hat viel erlebt, in Amerika, dem Iran, Saudi-Arabien, Italien natürlich oder in der Schweiz. Kaum aber passiert ihr ein Abenteuer, wird auch schon eine spannende Geschichte daraus. Sie erzählt uns von ihrer Jugend auf der Farm und von Sperrstunden-Pyjamapartys im Iran, Geldnot und einem Fiat 600. Davon, wie sie als "Anstandsdame" nach Italien kam, von der Jagd nach dem perfekten Cappuccino und kleinen Wundern in den Bergen.

Schwächeanfall in der Questura. Brunetti landet im Ospedale Civile. Das Räderwerk des Alltags hat ihn zermürbt. Nachdem man ihn krankgeschrieben hat, will der Commissario in der Villa einer Verwandten von Paola zur Ruhe kommen. Wie wunderbar, einmal nicht Verbrechern hinterherzujagen, sondern in ländlicher Idylle seine Gedanken mit den Wolken ziehen zu lassen. Brunetti soll sich in der Lagune erholen: Doch zwischen Bienen und Blumen kommt er einem größeren Fall als je zuvor auf die Spur.

On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing the fake designer handbags that the man was selling. The dead man is one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours and trading without a work permit. Like everybody involved, Commissario Brunetti wonders why anyone would kill an illegal immigrant. But once Brunetti begins to investigate this unfamiliar Venetian underworld, he discovers that matters of great value are at stake.

When the body of a man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Commissario Guido Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. With Inspector Vianello, Brunetti canvasses shoe stores, and winds up on the mainland in Mestre, outside his usual sphere, where they learn that the man had a kindly way with animals. Meanwhile, animal rights and meat consumption are quickly becoming preoccupying issues at the Venice Questura, as well as in Brunetti’s home.

Late one night, Brunetti is called away from dinner to investigate the death of a widow in her modest apartment. Though there are some signs of a struggle, the medical examiner rules that she died of a heart attack. It seems there is nothing for Brunetti to investigate. But he can’t shake the feeling that something or someone may have triggered her heart attack, that perhaps the woman was threatened. Conversations with the woman’s son, her upstairs neighbor, and the nun in charge of the old-age home where she volunteered do little to satisfy Brunetti’s nagging curiosity.

Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti’s hopes of escaping the sweltering heat of Venice in August for a refreshing family holiday in the mountains are dashed when a gruesome discovery is made in a field in Marghera—a body so badly beaten the face is completely unrecognizable. Brunetti searches Venice for someone who can identify the corpse, but he is met with a wall of silence. Then he receives a phone call promising tantalizing information, provided he meets with the caller under a bridge outside of town in the middle of the night.

Venetian detective Commissario Guido Brunetti is called to investigate the death of a young cadet. The boy has been found hanged, a presumed suicide, in Venice's elite military academy. Brunetti's sorrow for the boy, so close in age to his own son, is rivaled only by his contempt for a community that is more concerned with protecting the reputation of the school, and its privileged students, than understanding this tragedy. The young man is the son of a doctor and former politician, a man of an impeccable integrity all too rare in Italian politics.

When Commissario Brunetti is summoned in the middle of the night to the hospital bed of a senior pediatrician, he is confronted with more questions than answers. Three men—a young Carabiniere captain and two privates from out of town—had burst into the doctor’s apartment while the family was sleeping, attacked him, and taken away his eighteen-month-old boy. What could have motivated an assault by the forces of the state so violent that it has left the doctor mute? Who would have authorized such an alarming operation?

When the body of a wealthy elderly woman is found, brutally murdered in her Venetian flat, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared. As the runaway maid’s train is leaving Italy for Romania, she is approached by the border police, runs away, and is killed as she crosses the tracks in front of an oncoming train. She has a considerable sum of money on her and her papers are obviously fake. Case closed. But when the old woman’s neighbor returns from a business trip in London, it becomes clear that the maid could not have committed the crime.

It all begins with an early morning phone call. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the city, and Brunetti is shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is his own wife, Paola. She has taken a stand against a travel agency known for a certain kind of shady tourism. Meanwhile, at work, Brunetti is under pressure from his superiors to solve a daring robbery with a link to a suspicious accidental death. Does it all lead back to the Mafia? And how are his family’s actions connected to these crimes?

When a friend of Commissario Guido Brunetti’s brother, a priest recently returned from years of missionary work in Africa, calls on him with a request, Brunetti suspects the man has hidden motives. An American-style Christian group has begun meeting in private homes in the city, and it’s possible the priest is merely wary of the competition. Brunetti and his wife, Paola, decide to go undercover. But when a girl’s body is found floating in a canal, Brunetti must put everything aside to investigate the secretive world of her people, the gypsies, who exist on the fringes of Italian society.

In The Golden Egg, as the first leaves of autumn begin to fall, Commissario Guido Brunetti’s wife Paola comes to him with a request. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaners has suffered a fatal sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing or helping him. To please her, Brunetti investigates the death and is surprised to find nothing on the man: no birth certificate, no driver’s license, no credit cards. As far as the Italian government is concerned, he never existed. And yet, there is a body.

Mystery lovers everywhere are addicted to Donna Leon’s ever-honorable Commissario Guido Brunetti and her portrayal of Venice’s beautiful but sinister byways and canals. In Willful Behavior, 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 secrets of Nazi collaboration and the exploitation of Italian Jews.

Internationally praised for her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Donna Leon’s first standalone novel features a widely different but equally compelling sleuth, Caterina Pellegrini. Caterina is a native Venetian, and like so many of them, she’s had to leave home to pursue her career. With a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, she lands in Manchester, England. Manchester, however, is no Venice. When Caterina gets word of a position back home, she jumps at the opportunity. The job is an unusual one.

In Donna Leon’s ninth novel featuring her celebrated protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti finds himself caught up in a typically Venetian problem: red tape over renovations. Visited by a young bureaucrat, Brunetti learns that, officially, his apartment does not exist. The extra floor that was added years before was never approved. But what begins as a troublesome headache ends in murder when the bureaucrat is found dead after a mysterious fall from a scaffold. Brunetti starts an investigation that takes him into unfamiliar and dangerous areas of Venetian life.

In Death and Judgment, the fourth novel in Donna Leon's bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series, a truck crashes and spills its dangerous cargo on a treacherous road in the Italian Dolomite Mountains. Meanwhile, a prominent international lawyer is found dead aboard an intercity train bound for Venice. Brunetti suspects a connection between the two tragedies. Digging deep for an answer, he stumbles upon a seedy Venetian bar that holds the key to a crime network that reaches far beyond the laguna.

On a luminous spring day in Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti and Inspector Vianello play hooky to help get Vianello’s friend Marco Ribetti—an environmental activist arrested during a protest against toxic waste being dumped into the city’s waters—released from prison. But on the steps of the police headquarters, they come face-to-face with Ribetti’s cantankerous father-in-law, who has been overheard making threats against Ribetti.

Donna Leon’s bestselling series featuring the principled, warmhearted Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti has won her countless fans, critical acclaim, and international renown as one of the world’s best crime writers. In A Question of Belief, Brunetti must contend with ingenious corruption, bureaucratic intransigence, and the stifling heat of a Venetian summer. With his hometown beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Brunetti’s greatest wish is to go to the mountains with his family, where he can sleep under a down comforter and catch up on his reading.

On a beautiful spring morning on the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, a small boat moored at the docks suddenly explodes, killing two local clam fishermen. When it becomes clear that the fire was deliberately set, Brunetti decides to investigate. But when he tries to dig up information about the murder, the island’s tight-knit—and closemouthed—community closes ranks, forcing Brunetti to accept Signorina Elettra’s offer to visit her relatives there to search for clues.

Donna Leon’s memoir, Wandering through Life, gave her legions of fans a colorful tour through her life, from childhood in New Jersey to adventures in China and Iran, to her love of Venice and opera. Nowhere, however, did she discuss her writing life. In Backstage, Donna reveals her admiration for, and inspiration from, the great crime novelists Ruth Rendell and Ross MacDonald, examining their approach to storytelling as she dissects her favorite books of theirs. She expresses her love for Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and her appreciation for Sir Walter Scott’s generosity of spirit.