Donna Leon

The Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery Series

A Sea of Troubles

Donna's comments about the book: "When I speak to readers and when I hear them talking, one of the characters they seem to like the most is Signorina Elettra--who I can never call Elettra, I would never think of calling her Elettra, I have to call her Signorina Elettra, Patta’s secretary, but also Brunetti’s secretary. A SEA OF TROUBLES, the tenth book, deals with her personal life. She falls in love with a young man, who is somehow involved in a police investigation. And under her own decision, she goes out to Pellestrina one of the long islands that blocks the laguna from the Adriatic. She goes out to a fishing village there to ask questions about a murder which has taken place and while she’s there she meets this young Italian, falls in love with him and Brunetti eventually discovers that there is a connection between the young man and the murder. And Signorina Elettra has to choose between love and duty. She’s Italian so, of course, she chooses love. And the book tells of the consequences of that decision."
(Transcribed from a Video Interview shown on the Random House UK website, 2005)

JACKET NOTES: ‘Many stories are told about the men of Pellestrina, the endurance and strength that have been forced upon them in their attempt to wrest a living from the sea. Old people in Venice remember a time when the men of Pellestrina were said to spend the nights, winter or summer, sleeping on the dirt floors of their cottages instead of in their beds so as to more easily push themselves out into the early morning and make the tide that would carry them into the Adriatic and thus to the fish. Like most stories that are told about how much tougher people were in the olden days, this is probably apocryphal.'
The murder of two of the clam fishermen of the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, draws Commissario Brunetti into the close-knit community of the island, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders worthy of the Mafia. When the Questore's secretary Signorina Elettra volunteers to visit the island, where she has relatives, Brunetti finds himself torn between his duty to solve the murders, concerns for Elettra's safety and his not entirely straightforward feelings for her...
A Sea of Troubles sees Commissario Brunetti adrift in the Venetian lagoon, but as wise and sympathetically human as ever, in Donna Leon's latest stunning addition to the Brunetti series.
(©William Heinemann)

Interviews & Articles
MHz Networks Interview with Donna Leon
April 2013 Interview on BBC's Meet the Author
Exclusive Donna Leon Interview
Donna Leon 2003 Interview - La Maga Abbandonata CD
2009 Interview by The Gypsy's Guide Blog
La Serenissima (December 2005)
An American in Venice (Washington Post)
Amazon.de Interview
Meet The Author 2005
March 2005 Interview
New Zealand Herald Interview
Conversation about Acqua Alta (Penguin)
German Interview Translated into English
Swiss EducETH Interview (July-2004)
A Patron of the Arts of Opera and Murder
Barnes & Noble Interview
BBC Radio 4
CBS Sunday Morning
At Lunch With Donna Leon