So Shall You Reap

The latest instalment from Donna Leon sees Brunetti engaged in a case that forces him to confront his past.

Donna Leon provides another delectable slice of the thoughtful policeman's life at work and at home... So Shall You Reap is as witty and wise as anything Leon has written. To read her is to restore the soul. - Mark Sanderson, The Times

Like all of Leon's novels, it ultimately feels like a glorious invigorating holiday. - Daily Express

On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice's canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. Because no official record of the man's presence in Venice exists, Brunetti is forced to use the city's far richer sources of information—gossip and the memories of people who knew the victim.

As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni, and Signorina Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle—random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships—that appear to have little in common. Until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.