Venice Commisario of Police Guido Brunetti and his partner Claudia Griffoni are called to the bedside of a dying woman as this latest outing (after Unto Us a Son Is Given) begins. When they arrive at the hospice, the patient is only able to tell them that her late husband, who supposedly died in a motorcycle accident, was killed over "bad money." She dies before she can tell them more. They investigate and learn the husband had worked at a company that monitored water quality in the area and was noted for his rectitude. Braving the summer heat, the detectives keep digging in an effort to find out what money the wife was talking about and if--and why--someone might have wanted her husband dead. The heat and blinding sunlight reflecting off the buildings and water become characters, too, in Leon's well-crafted, atmospheric mystery. VERDICT Fans of the series will enjoy this new adventure. [See Prepub Alert, 8/19/19.]--Dan Forrest, Western Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green

At the start of bestseller Leon's thought-provoking 29th mystery featuring Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti (after 2019's Unto Us a Son Is Given), Brunetti and his colleague, Commissario Claudia Griffoni, are called to a hospice at the request of 38-year-old Benedetta Toso, who's dying of cancer. Though Benedetta isn't fully lucid, Brunetti and Griffoni learn that she suspects foul play in the recent death of her husband, Vittorio Fadalto, a water distribution technician employed by the firm Spattuto Acqua. Vittorio drowned when his motorcycle went off the road, yet he had a reputation for careful behavior when it came to safety. His wife hints that Vittorio was involved in something dishonest, and the expert online sleuthing by a colleague of Brunetti's uncovers disturbing financial transactions. Brunetti sets out to examine employee activities at Spattuto Acqua, which is charged with maintaining the integrity of Venice's water supply. As usual, Leon adroitly portrays the complex questions of what constitutes justice and the sad consequences that can result from its pursuit. This long-running series shows no sign of losing steam. Agent: Susanne Bauknecht, Diogenes Verlag (Switzerland). (Mar.)

Throughout her acclaimed Guido Brunetti series, Leon has brilliantly melded topical social issues with timeless considerations of human imperfections and the dilemmas they generate. Here she does so again with a meditative novel that looks at the water crisis in Venice not flooding this time, but pollution set against the eternal problem of justice. When police commissario Brunetti and his colleague Claudia Griffoni are summoned to the deathbed of a woman whose husband has recently died, apparently in a car accident, they are told, by the dying woman, that ""bad money"" killed her husband. Is there a crime to be investigated, is this merely a family tragedy? Naturally, Brunetti digs into the matter and finds that the dead man, whose job involved testing the waters in Venice's canals for contamination, may have uncovered a scandal that could threaten every Venetian. A motive for murder? Or blackmail? Answering those questions, as so often happens in this series, leads to larger and more ambiguous questions, this time about ""that beast, justice."" Turning to Aeschylus' The Eumenides for clarity, Brunetti finds that our moral muddles have been with us for more than 2,000 years. This isn't the first time Brunetti has been forced to decide ""which crime to punish, which to ignore,"" but the burden of that decision has never been greater. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: In an age where so many seek simplistic and wrongheaded answers to complex questions, it is comforting that Leon, in celebrating human complexity, remains one of our most beloved writers.--Bill Ott Copyright 2020 Booklist