A Refiner’s Fire

Author Donna Leon
Narrator David Sibley
Publisher Cornerstone
Publish Date 18 July 2024
Run Time 9 hours and 1 minutes
Format Audio
Genre Crime and mystery fiction, Crime and mystery: police procedural, Thriller / suspense fiction, Thriller: organised crime / gangland crime.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Commissario Guido Brunetti returns with a gripping and powerful case about the murkiness of power and a test of loyalties

When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Monforte, for a job, he discovers that Monforte might not be such a hero after all.

This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Monforte’s past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.

A Refiner’s Fire is Donna Leon at her very best: an elegant, sophisticated storyteller whose indelible characters become richer with each book, and who constantly interrogates the ambiguity between moral and legal justice.

©2024 Donna Leon (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Crime writing of the highest order

Guardian

One of the best European novelists around

Amanda Craig

The series that has shadowed Brunetti for three decades is an epic achievement

The Times

One of the most subtle and exquisite detective series ever

Washington Post

This is Donna Leon at her very best, with rich characters and elegant, sophisticated storytelling

Dead Good Books - The best crime and thriller books of 2024

Only in a Donna Leon novel could you find Tacitus (“They make a desert and call it peace”) and Nancy Sinatra cited on the same page. You never know what she’s going to say next. If her increasingly sardonic wit provides more surprises than the perfectly crafted plot, this only proves what a truly great writer she has become.

The Times

Where else but Venice would you find a policeman who reads Proust, appreciates the beautiful things in life and cannot work on an empty stomach? . . . Like many of her readers, while I came for the crime, I stayed for the characters and Italian culture.

Financial Times, Lunch with the FT

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