Donna Leon
Acqua alta

»Intricate and intimate descriptions of Venetian life fill these pages and prove that Leon has once again created a high-stakes mystery in which the setting vibrates with as much life as the story itself.«Publishers' Weekly

»Her Venice thrillers with the attractive superintendent Brunetti have a fascination similar to that of the city in which they are set. The superintendent, a distant relative of Simenon’s Maigret, is a tolerant father of a family, and a remarkably unbureaucratic man. He has no difficulty in keeping the results of his investigations, the truth behind the truth, to himself in order to protect people and their feelings. He thus contributes a modicum of humanity to a morally decaying world in which the string-pullers of environmental crime and human traffic are allowed to stroll unimpeded over St. Mark’s Square.«Brigitte

»Donna Leon is a top thriller writer, on a par with Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Patricia Highsmith and Ruth Rendell. Women, so it would seem from literary history, have always been in their element with the genre of murder and violence.«SonntagsZeitung