Quietly in Their Sleep (Guido Brunetti Series #6)

by Donna Leon

Overview

In the sixth book featuring Donna Leon’s ever-charming and sympathetic protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti comes to the aid of a young nursing sister who has had five patients unexpectedly die and decides to leave her convent. In the course of his inquiries, Brunetti encounters an unusual cast of characters but discovers nothing that seems criminal. Is the nun simply creating a smoke screen to justify abandoning her vocation? Or has she stumbled onto something very real and very sinister—something that places her own life in imminent danger? A beautiful, suspense-filled novel, Quietly in Their Sleep is Donna Leon at the top of her form.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143115939
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/24/2009
Series:	Guido Brunetti Series , #6
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

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 London 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 Gallina was premiered in Innsbruck. 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).

Hometown:

Venice, Italy

Date of Birth:

February 28, 1942

Place of Birth:

Montclair, New Jersey

Education:

B.A., 1964; M.A. 1969; postgraduate work in English literature

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

One of the most exquisite and subtle detective series ever (The Washington Post)

Brunetti is the most humane sleuth since Georges SimenonÆs Inspector Maigret. (The Philadelphia Inquirer)

No one knows the labyrinthine world of Venice . . . like LeonÆs Brunetti. (Time)

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Quietly in Their Sleep :

“Brunetti is the most humane sleuth since Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. . . . He is a decent man [who achieves] a quiet heroism.”— Philadelphia Inquirer

“[Leon] offers a fresh, exhilarating take on that ambiguous city, with its labyrinthine alleyways and politics, its glamour, its grottiness. . . . An intelligent, satisfying crime novel.”— Sunday Times (UK)

Praise for Donna Leon:

“Leon’s books shimmer in the grace of their setting and are warmed by the charm of their characters.”— New York Times Book Review

“No one is more graceful and accomplished than Leon.”— Washington Post

“Intelligent and deeply satisfying mysteries. . . . The Venetian detective has reached . . . iconic status.”— Seattle Times

From the Publisher