When Commisario Guido Brunnetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of his apartment years earlier, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of who he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant government department. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunnetti at work, clearly scared, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is obviously going on that has implications greater than the fate of Brunnetti's appartment . . .

I found this book at home, probably an airport buy or a gift, and as I'd read a Donna Leon once before that I had caught as a wild release, I thought I'd give this a go. It's a gentle mystery, rather than a thriller, with Brunnetti seething internally about the apparent incompetence and corruption around him as apparently unconnected cases start to come together.

The sort of book for a deck-chair in the garden on a sunny afternoon such as today's.

Never been there before, so somewhere in the bar/restaurant