Donna Leon's 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.
Leon's Commissario Brunetti novels are international bestsellers and are all situated in or around Venice. They are written in English and translated into many foreign languages, but not into Italian, at Leon's request.
To find out more about Donna Leon, click here.