Blood from a stone

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Language
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Description

In a mystery that offers an unexpected take on life in contemporary Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti plunges into the unfamiliar Venetian underworld of illegal African immigrants as he investigates after a street vendor is killed in a scuffle. Reader's Guide available. $65,000 ad/promo. Simultaneous.

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Contributors
Colacci, David Narrator
Leon, Donna Author
ISBN
9780802146038
9780792741046
9781555848965

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Also in this Series

  • Death in a strange country (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 2) Cover
  • Dressed for death (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 3) Cover
  • Death and judgment (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 4) Cover
  • Acqua alta (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 5) Cover
  • Quietly in Their Sleep (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 6) Cover
  • A noble radiance (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 7) Cover
  • Fatal remedies (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 8) Cover
  • Friends in high places: a Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 9) Cover
  • A sea of troubles (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 10) Cover
  • Willful behavior (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 11) Cover
  • Uniform justice (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 12) Cover
  • Doctored evidence (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 13) Cover
  • Blood from a stone (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 14) Cover
  • Through a glass, darkly (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 15) Cover
  • Suffer the little children (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 16) Cover
  • The girl of his dreams (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 17) Cover
  • About face (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 18) Cover
  • A question of belief (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 19) Cover
  • Drawing conclusions (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 20) Cover
  • Beastly things (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 21) Cover
  • The golden egg (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 22) Cover
  • By its cover (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 23) Cover
  • Falling in love (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 24) Cover
  • The waters of eternal youth (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 25) Cover
  • Earthly remains (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 26) Cover
  • The temptation of forgiveness (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 27) Cover
  • Unto us a son is given (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 28) Cover
  • Trace elements (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 29) Cover
  • So shall you reap (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 32) Cover
  • A refiner's fire (Guido Brunetti mysteries Volume 33) Cover

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Similar Series From Novelist

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for series you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
The Guido Brunetti and Clare Fergusson mysteries explore the personal and professional lives of the detectives as well as serious social issues. The detectives contemplate the human condition and the nature of crime and criminals and effect justice, legal or not. -- Joyce Saricks
Though Joe Pickett is a Wyoming-based ranger and Guido Brunetti a Venice-based police officer, both series offer complex mysteries (often involving government corruption) in vividly depicted settings. The main characters share strong personal values and a sense of integrity. -- Shauna Griffin
Defined by a very strong sense of place -- small-town France in the Bruno Courreges mysteries and Venice, Italy in the Guido Brunetti mysteries -- these tales offer a leisurely pace, complex police protagonists, and rich detail. -- Mike Nilsson
Readers looking for police procedurals led by likeable, angst-filled detectives stationed in small but famous towns in England (DI Wilkins Mysteries) and Italy (Guido Brunetti Mysteries) will enjoy these atmospheric and intricately plotted series. -- Andrienne Cruz
These police procedural mystery series follow urban inspectors in Turkey (Ikmen) and Venice (Guido) as they solve a wide range of cases. Each series is intricately plotted and has a strong sense of place. -- Jennie Stevens
These leisurely paced police procedural series both focus as much on developing a strong sense of place (Guido Brunetti is set in Venice, Italy, while Darko Dawson works in Accra, Ghana), as they do exploring twisty and complex cases. -- Stephen Ashley
The Guido Brunetti and Adam Dalgleish series offer elegant prose, a strong sense of place, and sharp psychological insights. Sensitive detectives and well-drawn series characters add to these engaging mysteries, and social issues often form the backdrop for the crime. -- Joyce Saricks
Readers looking for leisurely paced police procedurals set in Italy will enjoy the small-town investigations of sarcastic detective Salvo Montalbano and likeable, angsty police superintendent Guido Brunetti. -- Andrienne Cruz
Though the Inspector Chen Cao series tends to be a bit more suspenseful than the more leisurely paced Guido Brunetti books, both twisty police procedural series follow keen-eyed sleuths while building a strong sense of place. -- Stephen Ashley

Similar Titles From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for titles you might like if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
These have the appeal factors well-crafted dialogue and intricately plotted, and they have the theme "urban police"; the subjects "police" and "detectives"; and characters that are "likeable characters."
These have the subjects "Mystery fiction," "Venice (Italy)--Fiction," and "Brunetti, Guido (Fictitious character)--Fiction."
These have the subject "Mystery fiction."

Similar Authors From NoveList

NoveList provides detailed suggestions for other authors you might want to read if you enjoyed this book. Suggestions are based on recommendations from librarians and other contributors.
Corruption Italian-style is a dominant theme of mystery writers Lindsey Davis and Donna Leon Although Davis writes about first century Rome and Leon about contemporary Venice. Their stories are filled with historical, geographical, and cultural details, with memorable characters and fascinating background facts. -- Katherine Johnson
Deborah Crombie and Donna Leon write police procedurals with well-developed, multi-dimensional characters and an unhurried pace. Crombie's Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James stories are set in England, while Leon's Guido Brunetti stories take place in Venice, Italy. Both authors evoke a strong sense of locale, atmosphere, and local customs. -- Ellen Guerci
Christobel Kent and Donna Leon set their mysteries in Italy with melancholy men as sleuths who must balance their personal lives with their work. The intricate plots emphasize the psychological aspect of crime and a strong sense of place is created through vivid descriptions of Italy. -- Merle Jacob
Michael Dibdin's Rome-based mysteries will please Donna Leon's fans. Dibdin's detective Zen fights organized crime and more throughout the country, while Leon's Vice-Commissario Brunetti works the region around Venice. Characters are more important than the plot, and both detectives must fight the corruption within and outside of the system. -- Katherine Johnson
It is not only in Italy that honest policemen must fight corruption and incompetence. Stuart M. Kaminsky's Russian police detective, Porfiry Rostnikov, tenaciously counters evils similar to those faced by Leon's Brunetti and enjoys similar satisfaction both in seeing justice served and in his relationships with his family and friends. -- Katherine Johnson
Magdalen Nabb and Donna Leon write intelligent, elegant, character-based mysteries set in Italy. Their lead police detectives are likable, ordinary-seeming men who must deal with official corruption while understanding that human lives may be more important than the actual resolutions to the investigations. -- Katherine Johnson
Readers who appreciate the sense of justice and interplay of life in Donna Leon's mysteries might also enjoy Robert Tanenbaum's Butch Karp/Marlene Ciampi series set in the NYC area. Corruption also abounds here, but family concerns play an important role in these mysteries, just as they do in Leon's. -- Katherine Johnson
Fans of world-weary Italian police detectives trying to combat corruption and solve a murder will enjoy both Andrea Camilleri and Donna Leon. Despite their different settings, the stories and the characters have much in common, including enjoyment of Italian food, as well as vivid descriptions of the locales. -- Katherine Johnson
Georges Simenon's and Donna Leon's mysteries feature a strong sense of place. In their works, a highly competent and thoughtful police official solves crimes as much by thought as action, must also deal with administrative concerns, and enjoys a loving family, contrasted with dysfunctional families they encounter during investigations. -- Katherine Johnson
These authors' works have the appeal factors strong sense of place, leisurely paced, and intricately plotted, and they have the genres "police procedurals" and "mysteries"; the subjects "murder investigation," "detectives," and "police"; and characters that are "flawed characters."
These authors' works have the appeal factors strong sense of place and leisurely paced, and they have the genre "police procedurals"; and the subjects "murder investigation," "detectives," and "police."
These authors' works have the appeal factors angst-filled, strong sense of place, and intricately plotted, and they have the genre "police procedurals"; and the subjects "murder investigation," "detectives," and "police."

Published Reviews

Booklist Review

The appeal of Guido Brunetti, the hero of Donna Leon's long-running Venetian crime series, comes not from his shrewdness, though he is plenty shrewd, nor from his quick wit. It comes, instead, from his role as an everyman. He is trapped in an impenetrable bureaucracy; his bosses are either foolish or corrupt; he lacks the power to catch the bad guys or to bring about justice. He is a cop, but his workaday world feels much like yours and mine. So it is here, as he attempts to investigate the peculiar murder of an illegal immigrant, a vu cumbra. The victim, a Senegalese street vendor, is shot, assassination style, as he peddles fake handbags to tourists. The murder brings out the latent racism of the locals, and as Brunetti attempts to come to terms with his own feelings about the immigrants, he realizes that the crime is only the tip of an iceberg that he will never be allowed to explore. He soldiers on, though, solving nothing, but doing good around the edges and making some sense of his feelings and those of his wife and children, also struggling with a new world in which the old assumptions no longer hold. Not so different from our own days at the office or nights around the dinner table. Crime fiction for those willing to grapple with, rather than escape, the uncertainties of daily life. --Bill Ott Copyright 2005 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
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Publisher's Weekly Review

In this stunning novel, the 14th to feature the dogged, intuitive Venetian police detective Guido Brunetti (after 2004's Doctored Evidence), Leon combines an engrossing, complex plot with an indictment of the corruption endemic to Italian society. The murder of an anonymous African street vendor, an inoffensive, possibly illegal Senegalese immigrant, explodes into a many-layered conundrum. Italian attitudes toward "Senegali" range from the bargain shoppers' approval of their harmless efforts to earn money selling knock-off accessories to legitimate merchants' outrage at competition from the cheaper goods. After Brunetti discovers uncut diamonds hidden in the victim's spartan room and evidence the room was searched, the Interior and Foreign Affairs Ministries take over the case and all of Brunetti's pertinent files, papers and computer disappear. Enraged, Brunetti sidesteps normal police procedures and taps into personal and professional sources, uncovering evidence linking the victim, the Angolan civil war, the Italian secret service and an industrial giant with government connections. Many of Leon's favorite characters appear, including the gourmand Brunetti's family, the obsequious Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and Patta's irreverent secretary, Signorina Elletra. They balance this dark, cynical tale of widespread secrecy, violence and corruption. Agent, Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (May 26) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
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Library Journal Review

This installment in the re-launched international crime series has the Commissario delving into Venice's community of illegal immigrants, counterfeiting, and murder. CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction-winner Leon lives in Venice. A 50,000-copy first printing. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Kirkus Book Review

Commissario Guido Brunetti's 14th case (Doctored Evidence, 2004, etc.) may be his best yet--not that he'd see it that way himself. The murder is so commonplace that the victim isn't even dignified with a name. He's just the black man placidly selling designer luggage off a sheet spread at Venice's Campo Santo Stefano, his life ended by five shots fired by two equally unruffled killers who give every sign of being professionals. Despite the crowds of potential witnesses, nobody's seen anything, nobody knows anything, and there's no evidence of anything until Brunetti's painstaking investigation leads him to a box of salt with no reason for being in an empty house. Just as he's beginning to make real progress, however, he's abruptly warned off the case by Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, his complacent, incompetent boss. Maybe the reason is simple racism of the sort Brunetti's own daughter Chiara displays when she says dismissively that the victim "wasn't one of us." But maybe there are sterner forces behind the warning: interference from what Brunetti, en route to an understanding powerless to bring about justice, calls "governmental, ecclesiastical, and criminal" forces, reflecting, "The great tragedy of his country ...was how equal they were as contenders." Leon's most adroit balance of teasing mystery, Brunetti's droll battles with his co-workers and higher-ups, and intimations of something far deeper and darker behind the curtain. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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Library Journal Reviews

Like Gamache, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venetian police department is smart, intuitive, humane, and patient. Like Penny, Leon is deft and subtle and crafts insightful and intricate mysteries. While the plots may be a bit more political than Penny's (but with the events surrounding the video in A Trick of Light that might be changing), the focus on landscape, family, colleagues, and community carries similar importance. Add in parallel touches of humor and a sophisticated style, and Penny fans could well find a new series to love. It is likely best to read Leon in order (the first is Death at La Fenice), but for listeners who do not mind jumping in mid-stream, Bloodf from a Stone is one of her best and translates to audio brilliantly. David Colacci handles the various languages with ease and creates for Brunetti a perfectly pitched, and paced, voice. He creates the other characters equally well through changes in speech pattern and rhythm. Colacci has a real feel for Leon and matches her subtly with a nuanced reading that is a delight. - Neal Wyatt, "RA Crossroads," Booksmack! 11/3/11 (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Library Journal Reviews

In her latest Guido Brunetti mystery, Leon explores the netherworld of illegal African immigrants who sell knockoff merchandise to the tourists in Venice. When two professional killers attack one of these transients, Guido is perplexed by the incongruity of the crime. His interest is piqued once again when his officious supervisor strongly encourages him to drop his investigation and his evidence disappears. Despite these setbacks, Guido pursues the murderer only to discover that the cold-blooded killers were motivated by reasons far removed from Venice. Leon's ability to weave multiple story elements into a stunning dénouement is as impressive as ever. David Colacci's masterful narration is rich with Italian ambiance and eminently listenable. Highly recommended.--Ray Vignovich, West Des Moines P.L.

[Page 133]. Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

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