Acqua Alta: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery
Donna Leon
Language: English
Pages: 304
ISBN: 0802120288
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Brett, an American who spearheaded a recent exhibition of Chinese pottery in Venice, lives with her lover, Flavia Petrelli, the reigning diva of La Scala. With his open mind and good sense, Brunetti finds himself more fazed by Flavia's breathtaking talent than by the nontraditional relationship between the two women. Brunetti's deliberate and humane investigation to uncover a motive for Brett's beating takes him to dark, wet corners of Venice and into a sinister web of art theft, fakery and base human desires.
“Every fan’s first-pick Brunetti novel.” —The New Yorker
“Music and art mingle delightfully with murder and mayhem in the course of this very engaging story.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“A subtle study of emotion and character… A sophisticated mystery.” —Library Journal
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had on Brunetti, he moderated his tone and asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘She was attacked by two men,’ Brunetti explained, and added, ‘neither of whom appeared to be a “butch dyke”. She’s in hospital.’ Patta struggled to prevent himself from remarking on this and instead asked, ‘Is this why you’re too busy to attend the conference?’ ‘The conference isn’t until next month, sir. I’ve got a number of cases current.’ Patta snorted to express his disbelief then suddenly asked, ‘What did they
architect?’ Signorina Elettra asked, and Vianello nodded in agreement. It was enough to remind Brunetti. Five months ago, the architect in charge of extensive restorations to a palazzo on the Grand Canal had sworn out a complaint against the son of the owner of the palazzo, claiming that the son had threatened him with violence if there were any more delays to the restoration project, already in its eighth month. The architects attempt to explain about the difficulty in obtaining building
do they copy that?’ ‘Oh, that’s relatively easy. They bury the piece in the ground; some of them use raw sewage and bury it there.’ Seeing Brunetti’s instinctive disgust, she explained. ‘It corrodes the paint and wears it away faster. Then they chip tiny pieces away, usually from the edges or from the bottom.’ To explain, she pointed to a small chip on the top rim of the vase in the photo, just where it met the cylindrical cover, and on the bottom, where the vase touched the ground. ‘Is it
bought and restored a palazzo on the Grand Canal. But even as he thought this, he thought of the presence of Salvatore La Capra’s fingerprints in Semenzato’s office and saw again the names of those cities and the identical dates when La Capra and Semenzato had visited them. Coincidence? Absurd. Scattalon had said La Capra was living in the palazzo; perhaps it was time for a representative of one of the official arms of the city to greet the new resident and have a word with him about the need
Flavia pushed herself back into her chair and studied the damaged face that lay sideways on the bed in front of her. The bruises that spread across the forehead and the cheeks had gone almost black during the last day and a half, and one eye was still swollen shut. Brett’s lower lip was swollen up and around the vertical split that left it gaping wide. Flavia had been forcibly kept out of the emergency room while the doctors worked on Brett, cleaning her back and taping her ribs. Nor had she
