A conductor succumbs to cyanide at the famed Venice opera house, in the first mystery in the New York Times–bestselling, award-winning series.
 
During intermission at the famed La Fenice opera house in Venice, Italy, a notoriously difficult and widely disliked German conductor is poisoned—and suspects abound. Guido Brunetti, a native Venetian, sets out to unravel the mystery behind the high-profile murder....

"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,...

A suspicious accident leads Commissario Guido Brunetti to uncover a longstanding scam with disturbing unintended consequences Surprised, if not dismayed, to discover from his superior, Vice-Questore Patta, that leaks are emanating from the Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised more consequentially by the appearance of a friend of his wife's, fearful that her son is using drugs and hopeful Brunetti can somehow intervene. When Tullio Gasparini,...

"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...

Commissario Guido Brunetti is kicking his heels, pondering the recent lack of crime in Venice, when a beautiful young woman appears at his office door. Now calling herself Maria Testa, his visitor is more familiar to Brunetti as Suor' Immacolata, the nun who once cared for his mother at the Casa di Cura in Dolo. But Maria has recently left her convent after the unexpected deaths of five patients. Brunetti offers to make some inquiries but finds no...

Early one morning Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice Police confronts a grisly sight when the body of a young man is fished out of a fetid canal. All the clues point to a violent mugging, but for Brunetti the motive of robbery seems altogether too convenient. When something is discovered in the victim's apartment that suggests the existence of a high-level conspiracy, Brunetti becomes convinced that somebody, somewhere, is taking great pains...

With the help of Inspector Vianello and Signorina Elettra, Commissario Guido Brunetti investigates the suspicious death of a Venetian widow.

Commissario Brunetti investigates the death of an animal lover whose decomposed body was found in a Venice canal.