A Refiner's Fire
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  • Published: 18 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804950975
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

A Refiner's Fire

Formats & editions
Tr. Paperback
4 Jun 2024
EBook
18 Jul 2024
Audiobook
18 Jul 2024
Hardback
18 Aug 2024
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Brunetti returns with a gripping and powerful case about the murkiness of power and a test of loyalties

When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Monforte, for a job, he discovers that Monforte might not be such a hero after all.

This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte’s past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.

A Refiner’s Fire is Donna Leon at her very best: an elegant, sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become richer with each book, and who constantly interrogates the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.
  • Published: 18 July 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804950975
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288
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About the author

Donna Leon

Donna Leon was named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. She is an award-winning crime novelist, celebrated for the bestselling Brunetti series. Donna has lived in Venice for thirty years and previously lived in Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China, where she worked as a teacher. Donna’s books have been translated into 35 languages and have been published around the world.

Her previous novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have all been highly acclaimed; including Friends in High Places, which won the CWA Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Fatal Remedies, Doctored Evidence, A Sea of Troubles and Beastly Things.

portrait photo of Donna Leon

Also by Donna Leon

Wandering Through Life
So Shall You Reap
Give Unto Others
Transient Desires
Trace Elements
Unto Us a Son Is Given
The Temptation of Forgiveness
See all

Praise for A Refiner's Fire

Crime writing of the highest order

Guardian

The series that has shadowed Brunetti for three decades is an epic achievement

The Times

One of the most subtle and exquisite detective series ever

Washington Post

One of the best European novelists around

Amanda Craig

This is Donna Leon at her very best, with rich characters and elegant, sophisticated storytelling

Dead Good Books - The best crime and thriller books of 2024

Only in a Donna Leon novel could you find Tacitus ("They make a desert and call it peace") and Nancy Sinatra cited on the same page. You never know what she’s going to say next. If her increasingly sardonic wit provides more surprises than the perfectly crafted plot, this only proves what a truly great writer she has become.

Mark Sanderson, The Times

Where else but Venice would you find a policeman who reads Proust, appreciates the beautiful things in life and cannot work on an empty stomach? . . . Like many of her readers, while I came for the crime, I stayed for the characters and Italian culture.

Claer Barrett, Financial Times, Lunch with the FT
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