The Girl of His Dreams

by Donna Leon (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2008

  $3.29

  On a rainy morning, not long after the funeral of his mother, Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to a 911 call reporting a body floating near the steps in one of Venice's side canals. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water. But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewellery that she carries.So Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, and for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children - be they innocent or guilty. The investigation takes Brunetti from the canals and palazzos of Venice to a Gypsy encampment on the mainland, through quicksands of connections and relationships both known and concealed, as he struggles with both institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.29

  As Commissario Guido Brunetti watches his mother buried, he takes some solace in the cloud dappled sky, the tops of the Venetian cypress trees, moving gently in the spring breezes. As ever, his wife Paola is at his side. 'There's nothing to remember about her except the good', she says. And that, thinks Brunetti, is exactly right. But then a ten-year-old gypsy girl, Ariana, is found dead in the canal, in possession of a man's watch and wedding ring, and pathologist Pucetti further reports that she was suffering from the effects of a sexually transmitted disease. On the paving stones, Ariana looks for a moment like a fairy tale princess, a halo of tangled golden hair radiating out from her sleeping face - a face that Brunetti begins to see in his dreams. To investigate Brunetti infiltrates the community of gypsies, or 'Rom', in official police parlance, living in camps out near the Dolo. But there's nothing official about the young Rom children sent to rob rich Venetian homes, and Brunetti struggles with institutional prejudice, the entrenched bureaucracy of expedience, and his own troubled conscience, as he tries to understand...

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $11.69

  One rainy morning Commissario Brunetti and Ispettore Vianello respond to an emergency call reporting a body floating near some steps on the Grand Canal. Reaching down to pull it out, Brunetti's wrist is caught by the silkiness of golden hair, and he sees a small foot - together he and Vianello lift a dead girl from the water. But, inconceivably, no one has reported a missing child, nor the theft of the gold jewellery that she carries. Brunetti is drawn into a search not only for the cause of her death but also for her identity, her family, and for the secrets that people will keep in order to protect their children - be they innocent or guilty. From the canals and palazzi of Venice to a gypsy encampment on the mainland, Brunetti struggles with institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality to try to unravel the fate of the dead child.