This was the moment, Brunetti knew, when the three of them should engage one another in talk about sports or any one of the conversational methods men used to fill up time. 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.

In a minor ancillary plot, Brunetti learns about the recent parole of a 'gentleman art thief', for whom Brunetti has an odd soft spot. As the detectives try to solve and crime and get justice, the forces of relative humanism that seems inherent in the Italian judicial system and these detectives stymie their efforts.

He’s charmed – perhaps too charmed, suggests his wife Paola – by her love of Virgil and Cicero, but shocked by her appearance. Brunetti harbours a certain resentment in respect of the incremental changes ongoing in this place, but isn’t that true of all of us as we reach a certain age? Under Italian inheritance laws, this man would beco It was a pleasant Buddhist Sri Lankan, Inesh Kavinda, who was living in the garden shed of the Palazzo Zaffo Sri Leonie.

Along with the great help of his team at the Questura, an eye-opening answer to the murder of Inesh presents itself and will force Brunetti to face his own past in an unexpected way.

As part of a wider investigation into Mafia takeovers of businesses in the region, Guarino wants information about the owner of a trucking company who was found murdered in his office. When important information is leaked from inside the Venetian Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is entrusted with the task of uncovering which of his colleagues is responsible.

As with every Brunetti novel there are themes, concerns and history running through it, Leon turns her eye to Italy's modern past, the 1970's when the Red Brigades sought to create a revolutionary state using violence as a weapon against those who they viewed against them. This is their first real case, but as luck would have it they have a friend on the inside: Max Mephisto is filming a remake of Dracula, starring Seth Billington, Bert’s son. Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). Brunetti, noting that ‘friends’ had been demoted to ‘colleagues’, paused a moment before asking, ‘Can we speak to Alvise first? Guido follows a number of threads, aided by the able Signorina Elettra, who refines a method she learns of at a conference, along with Vianello and Commissario Claudia Griffoni.There is no better literary tour guide to Venice and the surrounding landscape than Leon and each entry in this series provides complex, memorable characters and storylines that touch the moral center of the human spirit. Unless they filmed it on their phones and could boast about that, few people were willing to say they had witnessed a crime, reluctant to be caught up in the slow-grinding maw of the justice system.