In a series of vignettes full of affection, irony and good humor, Donna Leon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned. Having celebrated her 80th birthday in 2023, Leon poignantly confronts the dual challenges and pleasures of aging. Complete with a brief letter dissuading those hoping to meet Guido Brunetti at the Questura, and always suffused with music, food and her sharp sense of humor, WANDERING THROUGH LIFE offers Donna Leon at her most personal.

Around 1:00 on an early spring morning, two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s squares. Commissario Claudia Griffoni perhaps ill-advisedly walks the last of the boys home because his father, Dario Monforte, failed to pick him up at the Questura. Coincidentally, Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy friend of Vice-Questore Patta to vet Monforte for a job, triggering Brunetti’s memory that 20 years earlier Monforte had been publicly celebrated as the hero of a devastating bombing of the Italian military compound in Iraq. Yet Monforte had never been awarded a medal either by the Carabinieri, his service branch, or by the Italian government. That seeming contradiction, and the brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions.

On a cold November evening, Guido Brunetti and Paola are up late when a call from his colleague Ispettore Vianello arrives, alerting the Commissario that a hand has been seen in one of Venice’s canals. The body is soon found, and Brunetti is assigned to investigate the murder of an undocumented Sri Lankan immigrant. As the investigation expands, Brunetti, Vianello, Commissario Griffoni and Signora Elettra each assemble pieces of a puzzle --- random information about real estate and land use, books, university friendships --- that appear to have little in common. Until Brunetti stumbles over something that transports him back to his own student days, causing him to reflect on lost ideals and the errors of youth, on Italian politics and history, and on the accidents that sometimes lead to revelation.

Commissario Guido Brunetti is approached for a favor by Elisabetta Foscarini. Her son-in-law, Enrico Fenzo, has alarmed his wife (her daughter) by confessing that their family might be in danger because of something he’s involved with. Since Fenzo is an accountant, Brunetti logically suspects the cause of danger is related to the finances of a client. Yet his clients seem benign. However, when his friend’s daughter’s place of work is vandalized, Brunetti asks his own favors --- that his colleagues Claudia Griffoni, Lorenzo Vianello and Signorina Elettra Zorzi assist his private investigation, which soon enough turns official as they uncover the dark and Janus-faced nature of a venerable Italian institution.

Two young American women have been badly injured in a boating accident, joy riding in the Laguna with two young Italians. However, Commissario Guido Brunetti’s curiosity is aroused by the behavior of the young men, who abandoned the victims after taking them to the hospital. He and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, discover that one of the young men works for a man rumored to be involved in more sinister nighttime activities in the Laguna. As a result, Brunetti enlists the help of both the Carabinieri and the Guardia di Costiera. Determining how much trust he and Griffoni can put in these unfamiliar colleagues adds to the difficulty of solving a peculiarly horrible crime whose perpetrators are technologically brilliant and ruthlessly organized.

When the body of a man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet and wearing only one shoe, Commissario Guido Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. With Inspector Vianello, Brunetti canvasses shoe stores and winds up on the mainland in Mestre, outside his usual sphere, where they learn that the man had a kindly way with animals. Meanwhile, animal rights and meat consumption are quickly becoming preoccupying issues at the Venice Questura, as well as in Brunetti’s home. With the help of Signorina Elettra, Brunetti and Vianello are able to identify the man and understand why someone wanted him dead.

When Dottoressa Donato calls the Questura to report that a dying patient at the hospice Fatebenefratelli wants to speak to the police, Commissario Guido Brunetti and his colleague, Claudia Griffoni, waste no time in responding. “They killed him. It was bad money. I told him no,” Benedetta Toso gasps the words about her recently deceased husband, Vittorio Fadalto. Even though he is not sure she can hear him, Brunetti softly promises that he and Griffoni will look into what initially appears to be a private family tragedy. Piecing together the tangled threads, in time Brunetti comes to realize the perilous meaning in the woman’s accusation and the threat it reveals to the health of the entire region.

Count Orazio Falier urges his son-in-law, Guido Brunetti, to investigate --- and preferably intervene in --- the seemingly innocent plan of the Count’s best friend, the elderly Gonzalo Rodríguez de Tejada, to adopt a much younger man as his son. Under Italian inheritance laws, this man would then be heir to Gonzalo’s entire fortune, a prospect Gonzalo’s friends find appalling. Gonzalo unexpectedly drops dead on the street, and one of his friends who just arrived in Venice for the memorial service is strangled in her hotel room. Now with an urgent case to solve, Brunetti reluctantly untangles the long-hidden mystery in Gonzalo’s life that ultimately led to murder --- a resolution that brings him way more pain than satisfaction.

With his hometown beset by hordes of tourists and baking under a glaring sun, Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti's greatest wish is to go to the mountains with his family, where he can sleep under a down comforter and catch up on his reading. But before he can go on vacation, a folder with court records has landed on his desk, brought by an old friend. It appears that cases at the local court --- hardly known as a model of efficiency --- are being delayed to the benefit of one of the parties, a creative new trick for corrupting the system. And just when it looks like Brunetti will be able to get away, a shocking, violent crime forces him to stay in Venice.

Surprised, if not dismayed, to discover from his superior that leaks are emanating from the Questura, Commissario Guido Brunetti is surprised more consequentially by the appearance of a friend of his wife’s, fearful that her son is using drugs and hopeful Brunetti can somehow intervene. When the woman’s husband is found unconscious with a serious brain injury at the foot of a bridge in Venice after midnight, Brunetti is drawn to pursue a possible connection to the boy’s behavior. But the truth, as Brunetti has experienced so often, is not so straightforward.

Commissario Guido Brunetti loses patience at work, and in the aftermath realizes that he needs a break and is granted leave from the Questura. His wife, Paola, urges him to spend time at a villa owned by a wealthy relative on Sant’Erasmo, one of the largest islands in the laguna. There he passes his days rowing with the villa’s caretaker, Davide Casati, who is seeking the reason his bee colonies in the laguna are suffering. The recuperative stay goes according to plan until Casati goes missing following a sudden storm. Compelled to investigate, Brunetti sets aside his leave of absence to understand what happened to the man who has become his friend, in the process dredging up dark memories of an accident and cover-up years before.

Fifteen years ago, a teenage girl fell into a canal late at night. Unable to swim, she went under and started to drown, only surviving thanks to a nearby man, an alcoholic, who heard her splashes and pulled her out, though not before she suffered irreparable brain damage that left her in a state of permanent childhood. The drunk man claimed he saw her thrown into the canal by another man, but the following day he couldn’t remember a thing. Now, at a fundraising dinner for a Venetian charity, a wealthy and aristocratic patroness --- the girl’s grandmother --- asks Brunetti if he will investigate.

Invited by Commissario Guido Brunetti to dine at his in-laws’ palazzo, opera star Flavia Petrelli confesses her alarm at the excessive displays of adoration from an anonymous fan. When a talented young Venetian singer who has caught Flavia’s attention is savagely attacked, Brunetti begins to think that Flavia’s fears are justified in ways neither of them imagined. He must enter into the psyche of an obsessive fan before Flavia, or anyone else, comes to harm.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem --- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn’t exist.

One afternoon, Commissario Guido Brunetti gets a frantic call from the director of a prestigious Venetian library. Someone has stolen pages out of several rare books. After a round of questioning, the case seems clear: the culprit must be the man who requested the volumes, an American professor from a Kansas university. The only problem --- the man fled the library earlier that day, and after checking his credentials, the American professor doesn’t exist.

For many years, Donna Leon has written essays for European publications. Collected here are the best of these: over 50 funny, charming, passionate and insightful essays that range from battles over garbage in the canals to the troubles with rehabbing Venetian real estate. She shares episodes from her life in Venice, explores her love of opera and recounts tales from in and around her country house in the mountains.

Vice Questore Patta asks Brunetti to look into a minor shop-keeping violation committed by the mayor’s future daughter-in-law. Then Brunetti’s wife, Paola, comes to him with a request of her own. The mentally handicapped man who worked at their dry cleaner has just died of a sleeping pill overdose, and Paola loathes the idea that he lived and died without anyone noticing him, or helping him. Brunetti begins to investigate and is surprised when he finds nothing on the man. As far as the Italian government is concerned, he never existed.

Caterina Pellegrini, a native Venetian with a doctorate in baroque opera from Vienna, goes to Manchester, England to pursue her career. However, Caterina jumps at the opportunity of a position back home --- the job is an unusual one. Two locked trunks containing the papers of a baroque composer have been discovered --- the composer died childless, yet now two Venetians, descendents of his cousins, claim inheritance. Caterina must examine any enclosed papers to discover the “testamentary disposition” of the composer.

Late one night, Commissario Guido Brunetti is called away from dinner to investigate the death of a widow in her apartment. Though there are some signs of a struggle, the medical examiner rules that she died of a heart attack. It seems there is nothing for Brunetti to investigate. But he can’t shake the feeling that something, or someone, may have triggered her heart attack.