Investigating the lack of a building permit for Commissioner Brunetti's apartment, a young bureaucrat uncovers a frightening secret and promptly dies from an apparently accidental fall. Investigating his death in turn, Brunetti is drawn into a world of drugs, loan-sharking, and corruption.

Commissario Brunetti runs up against a wall of silence when he sets out to investigate the apparent suicide of a young man, the son of a prominent doctor, found hanged in Venice's elite military academy.

Commisario Guido Brunetti works multiple cases in the middle of a Venetian summer--one involves the elderly aunt of a close associate and her dealings with a possibly fraudulent astrologer, and another involves a corrupt judge who delays trials for the right price.

Issues of religion and politics take center stage in the household of Venice's Commissario Guido Brunetti when he and his wife go undercover to investigate the possibility that a charlatan posing as a preacher has begun developing an American-style Christian sect in the city, and Brunetti's attempts to investigate the death of a gypsy child found floating in a canal are hindered by sensitivities to multicultural issues.

In a mystery that offers an unexpected take on life in contemporary Venice, Commissario Guido Brunetti plunges into the Venetian underworld of illegal African immigrants as he investigates after a street vendor is killed in a scuffle.

Left behind by her family while on vacation, a harried housewife opts for a solo holiday in Venice. As she blossoms on her own, she realizes she must choose between her old, responsible life and her newfound freedom.