By Its Cover

Donna Leon

Apr 2014 · Commissario Brunetti Mysteries Book 23 · Recorded Books · Narrated by David Colacci

About this audiobook

Donna Leon' s critically acclaimed, internationally bestselling Commissario Guido Brunetti series has attracted readers the world over with the beauty of its setting, the humanity of its characters, and its fearlessness in exploring politics, morality, and contemporary Italian culture. In the pages of Leon' s novels, the beloved conversations of the Brunetti family have drawn on topics of art and literature, but books are at the heart of this novel in a way they never have been before. One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem-- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn' t exist. As the investigation proceeds, the suspects multiply. And when a seemingly harmless theologian, who had spent years reading at the library turns up brutally murdered, Brunetti must question his expectations about what makes a man innocent, or guilty.

Ratings and reviews

addictive-behaviors, Venice, law-enforcement, art-theft, rare-books, greed, lies, librarian, library, family, family-dynamics, friendship, class-consciousness, clergy, false-information, extortion***** The murder comes near the last quarter of the book. The investigation is of the theft of rare book and even of the illuminated pages cut from books printed in the 16th century. The investigation begins at one particular revered library, but it is soon apparent that it is a problem not only in Venice but in all of Europe. It's the same as with stolen or looted artifacts, the items are stolen to order and sold to private collectors. Well done. David Colacci continues to be the voice actor who performs the series to the delight of me and other readers.

About the author

Donna Leon was born on September 29, 1942 in Montclair, New Jersey. She taught English literature in England, Switzerland, Iran, China, Italy and Saudi Arabia. She is the author of a Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery series. Friends in High Places, a novel from the series, won the Crime Writers Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction in 2000. German Television has produced 16 Commissario Brunetti mysteries for broadcast. She was a crime reviewer for the Sunday Times. She has written the libretto for a comic opera and has set up her own opera company, Il Complesso Barocco. Her titles Jewels of Pardise, The Golden Egg, By Its Cover, Falling in Love and The Waters of Eternal Youth made The New York Times Bestseller List.