Ana María Ullán De La Fuente Books

Maria Testa, better known to Brunetti as the nun who once cared for his mother, turns up at the Commissario's door. Maria has left her nursing convent after the suspicious deaths of five patients. Is she creating fears to justify abandoning her vocation, or is there a more sinister scenario?

For Commissario Guido Brunetti it began with an early morning phone call. A sudden act of vandalism had just been committed in the chill Venetian dawn, a rock thrown in anger through the window of a building. But soon Brunetti finds that the perpetrator is no petty criminal. For the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene of the crime is none other than Paola Brunetti, his wife.

The celebrated opera house, La Fenice, has seen its share of death. But nothing so horrific and violent as that of conductor, Maestro Helmut Wellauer, poisoned during a performance of La Traviata. Commissario of Police, Guido Brunetti, has to step behind the lights into the bitchy world of opera to investigate.

The Cold War is over and Ned has been demoted to the training academy. He asks his old mentor, George Smiley, to address his passing-out class. There are no laundered reminiscences; Smiley speaks the truth - perhaps the last the students will ever hear.