Friends In High Places: (Brunetti 9) - Tapa blanda

"Leon's best so far ... I don't think I could really understand a crime fan who didn't love Donna Leon" (Scotland on Sunday)

"Leon tells the story as if she loves Venice as much as her detective does, warts and all. The plot and subplots unfold elegantly; beauty and the beast march hand in hand, and the result is rich entertainment." (Sunday Times)

"All Donna Leon's novels are excellent in their evocation of place, while in Brunetti she has created a character who becomes more real in each book ... However, Friends in High Places is by far the best, and marks a quantum leap forward" (Evening Standard)

"Leon is a skilful plotter ... Brunetti is a nicely shaded creation, a moral man who is also all too human. Friends in High Places is a splendid read, clever and provoking" (The Observer)

"Friends in High Places [is an] elegant police procedural set in beautifully imagined Venice" (Sunday Times)

When Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years earlier, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant government department. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunetti at work, clearly scared, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is obviously going on that has implications greater than the fate of Brunetti's apartment ...