By Its Cover

Donna Leon’s critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has attracted readers the world over with the beauty of its setting, the humanity of its characters, and its fearlessness in exploring politics, morality, and contemporary Italian culture. In the pages of Leon’s novels, the beloved conversations of the Brunetti family have drawn on topics of art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel in a way they never have been before.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare travel books, and some volumes have vanished altogether. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: The culprit must be the man who requested the books, an American professor visiting from Kansas. But the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials with the university in America, it becomes clear that he is not who he said he was. Meanwhile, the director of the library worries about news of the theft getting out—some of the vandalized books were donated to the library by an eccentric but high-ranking member of Venetian society, one intimately connected to Brunetti’s mother-in-law.

As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless character turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti is forced to question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or guilty.