Death at La Fenice

This mystery is the first in a critically acclaimed series featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, a man with integrity who uses both a personal moral code and a well-developed sense of cynicism to solve crimes within the corrupt bureaucracy of Venice, Italy. The author is an American who has spent several years living in Venice. The initial case in the series concerns a famous German conductor who is poisoned between acts two and three of LA TRAVIATA. Is the murderer the grieving wife, the opera director, the soprano diva, the diva's lesbian lover...or does the key to this case lie deeper in the conductor's past? DEATH AT LA FENICE won Japan's 1991 Suntory Prize for Best Suspense Novel.