The winner of the Crime Writers Association Macallan Silver Daggeraavailable for the first time in the United States Donna Leonas sophisticated Commissario Brunetti series has won her legions of fans over the years. In "Friends in High Places," Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the lack of official approval for the building of Brunettias apartment years before. What began as a red tape headache ends in murder when the bureaucrat is found dead after a mysterious fall from a scaffold. Brunetti starts an investigation that will take him into unfamiliar and dangerous areas of Venetian life, and will reveal, once again, what a difference it makes to have friends in high places.