Donna Leon

Page Updated: 09/09/02

Donna Leon

A Sea of Troubles

Friends in High Places

by Donna Leon

About the Author (Photo by Jerry Bauer)

Bibliography

Audio Tape - Random House Audio (2001)

A Sea of Troubles
The murder of two of the clam fishermen of the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia.
Andrew Sachs is one of Britain’s busiest and most popular actors. Perhaps best known for his role as Manuel in Fawlty Towers he has also written for and acted in theatre, television and radio drama, as well as touring with his own stage show. Voice work includes television narration for countless documentaries, recordings of popular and classic audio books and albums of poetry.
2 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 3 hrs Abridged by Derek Webb Produced by Mike Carrington Wood

Audio Tape Random House Audio (2000)

Friends in High Places
Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat concerning the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years before. His first reaction, like any other Venetian, even a cop, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant local government department. But when the bureaucrat rings him at work, clearly scared by some information he plans to give Brunetti, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is clearly going on that has implications rather greater than the fate of Guide's own apartment.
Brunetti’s investigations take him into unfamiliar areas of Venetian life - drug abuse and loan-sharking - while the deaths of two young drug addicts and the arrest - and subsequent release – of a suspected drug-dealer reveal, once again, what a difference it makes in Venice to have friends in high places.
Tim Pigott-Smith is one of Britain's best-known actors who has worked widely on both stage and screen. Television credits include Jewel in The Crown and The Chief. He has performed with the RSC and has also read a number of audiobooks.
2 Cassettes Running Time: approx. 3 hrs Abridged by Derek Webb Produced by Mike Carrington Wood

About The Author
A New Yorker of Irish/Spanish descent, Donna Leon first went to Italy in 1965, returning regularly over the next decade or so while pursuing a career as an academic in the States and then later in Iran, China and finally Saudi Arabia. It was after a period in Saudi Arabia, which she found ‘damaging physically and spiritually’ that Donna decided to move to Venice, where she has now lived for over twenty years.
Her debut as a crime fiction writer began as a joke: talking in a dressing room in Venice’s opera-house La Fenice after a performance, Donna and a singer friend were vilifying a particular German conductor. From the thought ‘why don’t we kill him?’ and discussion of when, where and how, the idea for Death at La Fenice took shape, and was completed over the next four months.
Donna Leon is the crime reviewer for the Sunday Times and is an opera expert. She has written the libretto for a comic opera, entitled Dona Gallina. Set in a chicken coop, and making use of existing baroque music, Donna Galliana was premiered in Innsbruck in December. Brigitte Fassbaender, one of the great mezzo-sopranos of our time, and now head of the Landestheater in Innsbruck, agreed to come out of retirement both to direct the opera and to play the part of the witch Azuneris (whose name combines the names of the two great Verdi villainesses Azucena and Amneris.

Bibliography
N.B. dates and publishers in dark red indicate British First Editions. Dates and publishers in black indicate recent reprints.

A Sea of Troubles (Random House Audio, 2001) (Commissario Guido Brunetti)

Friends in High Places (Random House Audio, 2000) (Commissario Guido Brunetti)