Fatal Remedies [Paperback]

In this eighth Donna Leon police procedural set in Venice, honest cop Brunetti finds himself, for once, bending the rules severely. His wife, Paola, has been arrested for vandalism and malicious damage. She has, of course, acted out of the highest of motives--the tourist agency whose windows she smashed specialises in trips for unaccompanied men to the Far East. But just how far is it legitimate to go when faced with something like sex tourism? And how can Brunetti pursue justice with his wife taking the law into her own hands?

This has all of Leon's regular cast of characters--Brunetti's indolent and corrupt superior Patta, only too pleased to use his zealous commissario as a scapegoat, and Paola's somewhat sinister father, Count Falier, one of the men who, for good and ill, run the city of Venice. As always, the plot switchbacks from crime to crime and issue to issue. Leon's endlessly superior capacity for leading her readers up a variety of garden paths has rarely been so clearly on display. Above all, it shows what has been one of the more attractive marriages in modern detective fiction under serious stress for the first time; these have always been detective stories that offered more rewards than those of crime and punishment and this one is no exception.--Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

‘...one of the most engaging of fictional detectives....Brunetti is...back on track, sadder perhaps, but wiser and wittier than ever.’

‘Donna Leon can paralyse the reader with a joyful suspense, lost in the environs of Venice and hopelessly in love with her central character and his wife’

‘Ms Leon...tells a masterly tale...intriguing, fast-moving, and beautifully crafted’

An exciting thriller in Venice.

For Commissario Guido Brunetti it began with an early morning phone call. A sudden act of vandalism has just been committed in the chill Venetian dawn, a rock thrown in anger through the window of a building in the deserted city. But soon Brunetti finds out that the perpetrator is no petty criminal intent on some annoying anonymous act. For the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene of the crime in none other than Paola Brunetti. His wife. As Paola's actions provoke a crisis in the Brunetti household, Brunetti himself is under pressure at work: a daring robbery with Mafia connections is then linked to a suspicious accidental death and his superiors need quick results. But now Brunetti's own career is under threat as his professional and personal lives clash - and the conspiracy which Paola had risked everything to explose draws him inexorably to the brink.

An exciting thriller in Venice.

Donna Leon has lived and taught English literature in Switzerlnd, Iran, Italy, China and Saudi Arabia. She now lives in Venice and is the Sunday Times' crime reviewer. (19990729)