Blood from a Stone: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

When Atlantic Monthly Press relaunched her Commissario Guido Brunetti series, Donna Leon was hailed as "the best mystery writer you've never heard of... She uses the relatively small and crime-free canvas of Venice for riffs about Italian life, sexual styles and-best of all-the kind of ingrown business and political corruption that seems to lurk just below the surface" (Chicago Tribune). Now Blood from a Stone brings her celebrated character Commissario Guido Brunetti back on the scene: On a cold Venetian night shortly before Christmas, a street vendor is killed in a scuffle in Campo San Stefano. The closest witnesses to the event are the tourists who had been browsing the man's wares before his death-fake handbags of every designer label. The dead man had been working as a vu cumpra, one of the many African immigrants purveying goods outside normal shop hours, trading without work permits.