Published: 2000 Genre: Detective/ Mystery 1. First lines. 2. Cover: Grove Atlantic 3. Police in Venice [Public Domain] via Wikimedia
Police Commissioner Brunetti investigates the death of a bureaucrat who was looking into building approval discrepancies in Venice. The trail leads to powerful people and criminal money-lending.
“We live in a fallen universe.”
Friends in High Places” by Donna Leon
- Glanceabook: “A police procedural that tends to plod.”
- New York Times: “The city of Venice is such a beguiling presence in Donna Leon’s mysteries, it can eclipse the serious crimes that drive her modern-day plots. Over the course of 30 novels featuring her compassionate police detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti, the American-born author has seized on fundamental Venetian plagues like government corruption, illegal immigration and badly behaved tourists. Which is not to overlook such scourges as bureaucratic inertia, rampant nepotism and rising seas.”
Quotes:
” … he knew from long experience that, when dealing with the police, few Italians could remember much beyond their own names.”
“Brunetti’s best friend had often said that he wanted death to take him just at the moment he laid his last lira down on a bar and said, ‘Prosecco for everyone.'”
“More than a thousand years had passed since the first buildings rose on the swampy land, so surely many of them must be in danger of falling down., but nothing ever did fall down.”
Other editions
Author: Donna Leon
Commissario Brunetti Series:
- Death at La Fenice 1992
- Death in a Strange Country 1993
- Dressed for Death 1994
- Death and Judgment 1995
- Acqua Alta 1996
- Quietly in Their Sleep 1997
- A Noble Radiance 1998
- Fatal Remedies 1999
- Friends in High Places 2000
- A Sea of Troubles 2001
- Wilful Behaviour 2002
- Uniform Justice 2003
- Doctored Evidence 2004
- Blood from a Stone 2005
- Through a Glass, Darkly 2006
- Suffer the Little Children 2007
- The Girl of His Dreams 2008
- About Face 2009
- A Question of Belief 2010
- Drawing Conclusions 2011
- Beastly Things 2012
- The Golden Egg 2013
- By Its Cover 2014
- Falling in Love 2015
- The Waters of Eternal Youth 2016
- Earthly Remains 2017
- The Temptation of Forgiveness 2018
- Unto Us a Son Is Given 2019
- Trace Elements 2020
- Transient Desires 2021
BOOK SNAPS - for readers 
Maybe she has run out of puff.
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