Leon, author of four Venetian mysteries, returns with a fifth. All feature Italian police commissioner Guido Brunetti, and all are rich in local ambiance and intrigue. In Leon's latest tale the worlds of opera and art intertwine when an archaeologist, whose lesbian lover is an opera diva, discovers that an exhibit on Chinese ceramics is full of fakes. Set amid the background of winter flooding in Venice, Acqua Alta is a subtle study of emotion and character. Anna Fields does a masterful job with the rich Italian and Chinese vocabulary and provides an enjoyable narration, but her performance is marred by her impersonation of male voices, which seems forced and distracting. A sophisticated mystery; purchase where the author's works are popular. Recommended. -Ray Vignovich, West Des Moines P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

In Leon's Guido Brunetti mysteries, Venice becomes more than setting, more than metaphor. Place and character meld to produce an atmosphere that teems with life beneath the surface, corruption permeating human activity as vermin infest the canals. In this fifth installment in the series, police commissario Brunetti investigates an elaborate art theft involving the archaeological dig at Xi'an in China. When American archaeologist Brett Lynch, whom Brunetti encountered on a previous case, discovers that fake Chinese ceramics have been substituted for the real thing while on exhibit in Venice, she is assaulted and the museum's curator is murdered. With Brett and her lover, Italian diva Flavia Petrelli, at risk, Brunetti braves Venice's winter floods, the dreaded acqua alta, to track the missing ceramics and expose the killer. Leon effectively combines fascinating details concerning art crime with subtle snapshots of Brunetti's domestic life and the romance between Brett and Flavia. These genuinely tender relationships emerge like an island sanctuary amid Venice's rain-soaked streets and corruption-drenched society. --Bill Ott

Just back from an archeological expedition to China's Xi'an dig, Brett Lynch is relaxing in the apartment of her lover, La Scala diva Flavia Petrelli, when two men knock at the door, matter-of-factly beat her, and warn her not to keep her appointment with Dottore Semenzato, director of the Palazzo Ducale, until recently the Venetian home of Brett's Xi'an finds. Brett survives her ordeal (two broken ribs, one cracked jaw), but it doesn't matter: A few days later, before she can talk her way out of the hospital, somebody visits the Palazzo Ducale and leaves Semenzato dead. Can Vice-Commissaire Guido Brunetti doubt that it was the same pair of thugs, or that their courtesies cast grave doubt on the authenticity of the Xi'an treasures, and the ``accidental'' verdict on the death back on the dig of Brett's assistant? And can Brunetti doubt that the power behind this nefarious plot is much-arrested Salvatore La Capra's wealthy collector father? Sadly, there's not enough doubt to make much ado over, leaving Brunetti's fifth (Death and Judgment, 1995, etc.) the most routine of a generally fine Venetian series.

Intelligent and charming Guido Brunetti, the commissioner of police in Venice (seen before in Death at La Fenice and Death in a Strange Country), continues to confront corruption in his fifth adventure. His moral anger pervades and gives substance to this mystery, from its peripheral incidents to the resolution, in which the villain explains all and which occurs in the rising waters of the title. Investigating an assault on American archeologist Brett Lynch, Brunetti wonders whether the two men who beat her are simply homophobic (Lynch's lover is a popular soprano) or, as Lynch suggests, whether they were trying to prevent her planned meeting with museum director Francesco Semenzato. Five years earlier, Lynch and Semenzato brought a touring display of Chinese antiquities to Venice. Recently, Lynch, on a dig in China, saw the same pieces and realized some had been replaced by fakes. Brunetti's sources suggest that Semenzato's interests in antiques are more diverse than is proper for a powerful museum director, but there's no opportunity for a confrontation: only four days after the beating, Semenzato is murdered. As Brunetti wends his way around the insider's Venice and through accumulating information (not all obtained entirely honestly), he also deals with his superiors, his wife and teenage daughter, all the while remaining the thoughtful, sensitive sleuth readers have come to expect. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved