Blood from a Stone - Softcover

Leon, Donna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 014303698X ISBN 13: 9780143036982

Publisher: Penguin Group USA, 2006

Synopsis

In a mystery that offers an unexpected take on life in contemporary Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti plunges into the unfamiliar Venetian underworld of illegal African immigrants as he investigates after a street vendor is killed in a scuffle. Reprint.

About this title

Review:

The latest of Donna Leon's novels about principled Venetian cop Brunetti, Blood from a Stone is one of her timeliest. Two mysterious white men carry out a professional hit on one of the Somali traders who illegally hawk counterfeit luggage in a local square, and for some reason, Brunetti's superiors are remarkably keen that the case be left unsolved. Is this mere casual institutional racism, or something even more sinister? Brunetti, like many other fictional policemen, has no particular gift for obedience to unreasonable orders, and has also a left-wing academic wife to prod his already active conscience. Donna Leon is not usually as political as she is here; this is one of her more biting thrillers in its indictment of international trade and the security state.

Brunetti has rarely been this melancholy--this is a thriller set in the dead of a Venice winter, and the cold, wet winds eat into our bones as we read. ---Roz Kaveney

Review:

"The fabulous Donna Leon" (Antonia Fraser Spectator)

"The thoughtful and charming [Brunetti] is on top form... His nicely balanced world...is cumulatively engrossing" (Sunday Times)

"Donna Leon has a wonderful feel for the hidden evils that lie below the façade of the magical city" (The Times)

"[Leon's] passion for all things Venetian - churches, palaces, statues and especially the food - comes over loud and clear... No one writes about the grey areas of life better" (Guardian)

"It would be simply perverse not to acknowledge the skill with which Leon has assembled these familiar elements... The reader comes to look forward to Paola's elegant Venetian lunches as much as Brunetti does...Comfort reading of the highest order" (TLS)

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Group USA
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 014303698X
• ISBN 13: 9780143036982
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 355