A noble radiance By Donna Leon

Commissario Brunetti delves into the shadows of a Venetian family’s past in this “gripping intellectual mystery” in the New York Times–bestselling series (Publishers Weekly).

In A Noble Radiance, a new landowner is summoned urgently to his house not far from Venice when workmen accidentally unearth a macabre grave. The human corpse is badly decomposed, but a ring found nearby proves to be a clue that reopens an infamous case of kidnapping involving one of Venice’s most aristocratic families. Only Commissario Brunetti can unravel the clues and find his way into both the hearts of patrician Venice and that of a family grieving for their abducted son.

“Goes a long way to confirming Donna Leon’s claim to have taken literary possession of Venice . . . A Noble Radiance gives the reader a delightful foretaste of the summer holidays to come, but it also offers much more than that.” —The Independent on Sunday

“The marvel of this book is that almost every detail on every page forms part of a succession of clues,