A dark thriller set mainly in GLASGOW
Ten Great Crime Books and Thrillers set in VENICE
10th November 2025
Ten great crime books and thrillers set in Venice. Celebrate the dark and suspenseful world of crime and thrillers set against the unique, atmospheric backdrop of Venice.
Peel back the picturesque façade of the floating city to explore its darker, more mysterious elements – the perfect setting for crime and thrillers. It is an opportunity to read how the city’s labyrinthine canals and centuries of secrets inspire tales of intrigue, betrayal, and murder.
Here are ten of our favourite titles:
The Garden of Angels by David Hewson
At his beloved Nonno Paolo’s deathbed, fifteen-year-old Nico receives a gift that will change his life forever: a yellowing manuscript which tells the haunting, twisty tale of what really happened to his grandfather in Nazi-occupied Venice in 1943.
The Palazzo Colombina is home to the Uccello family: three generations of men, trapped together in the dusty palace on Venice’s Grand Canal. Awkward fifteen-year-old Nico. His distant, business-focused father. And his beloved grandfather, Paolo. Paolo is dying. But before he passes, he has secrets he’s waited his whole life to share.
When a Jewish classmate is attacked by bullies, Nico just watches – earning him a week’s suspension and a typed, yellowing manuscript from his frail Nonno Paolo. A history lesson, his grandfather says. A secret he must keep from his father. A tale of blood and madness . . .
Nico is transported back to the Venice of 1943, an occupied city seething under its Nazi overlords, and to the defining moment of his grandfather’s life: when Paolo’s support for a murdered Jewish woman brings him into the sights of the city’s underground resistance. Hooked and unsettled, Nico can’t stop reading – but he soon wonders if he ever knew his beloved grandfather at all.
Venetian Gothic by Philip Gwynne Jones
Even the most beautiful city on earth has a dark side . . .
It is November 2nd, 2017. All Souls Day. On the Day of the Dead, the citizens of Venice make their way to the cemetery island of San Michele to pay their respects to the departed. When an empty coffin is unearthed in the English section of the graveyard, a day of quiet reflection for Nathan Sutherland becomes a journey into the dark past of a noble Venetian family.
A British journalist, investigating the events of forty years previously, disappears. A young tourist – with an unhealthy interest in Venice’s abandoned islands – is found drowned in the icy lagoon.
A terrible secret is about to be brought to light, and a deadly reckoning awaits on Venice’s Isle of the Dead.
The Abduction by Jonathan Holt
A teenage girl is kidnapped in Venice. The race to save her will uncover a conspiracy powerful men will kill to keep hidden.
THE HOSTAGE: The teenage daughter of a US soldier disappeared in Venice last night. Now clues are appearing on anonymous website Carnivia.com – and the police are always one step behind.
THE INVESTIGATORS: Kat Tapo of the Venice Carabinieri and US intelligence analyst Holly Boland are working together to find the girl. The deeper they dig, the darker the case becomes.
THE WEBMASTER: Daniele Barbo, creator of Carnivia, never allows access to his servers. But then secrets are unearthed from Italy’s dark wartime past. Secrets that could put them all in danger…
THE ABDUCTION has begun.
The Spy of Venice by Benet Brandreth
A historical thriller with a swashbuckling twist and a hero like you’ve never seen him before When he’s caught out by one ill-advised seduction too many, young William Shakespeare flees Stratford to seek his fortune. Cast adrift in London, Will falls in with a band of players – but greater men have their eye on this talented young wordsmith. England’s very survival hangs in the balance, and Will finds himself dispatched to Venice on a crucial embassy. Dazzled by the city’s masques – and its beauties – Will little realises the peril in which he finds himself. Catholic assassins would stop at nothing to end his mission on the point of their sharpened knives, and lurking in the shadows is a killer as clever as he is cruel.
Falling in Love by Donna Leon
In Death at La Fenice, Donna Leon’s first novel in the Commissario Brunetti series, readers were introduced to the glamorous and cut-throat world of opera and to one of Italy’s finest living sopranos, Flavia Petrelli. Now, many years later, Flavia has returned to the illustrious La Fenice to sing the lead in Tosca.
As an opera superstar, Flavia is well acquainted with attention from adoring fans and aspiring singers. But when one anonymous fan inundates her with bouquets of yellow roses – on stage, in her dressing room and even inside her locked apartment – it becomes clear that this admirer has become a dangerous stalker.
Distraught and horrified, Flavia turns to an old friend for help. In steps Commissario Brunetti. Familiar with Flavia’s melodramatic temperament, he is at first unperturbed by her story, only realising the situation is more threatening when another young opera singer is attacked. Desperate to keep Flavia out of danger, Brunetti is determined to find the culprit before more harm is done.
Ashes to Ashes, Diamonds to Dust by Pamela Allegretto
Venice sets the stage for a diamond caper gone wrong, where everyone is someone else, and no one can be trusted.
During her Venetian trip to participate in an international art exhibition, Carla Romano brings along her deceased friend’s ashes. But is that all she has in her tote bag? The FBI, Venetian police, and a gaggle of misfits believe otherwise. Five-million-dollars in stolen diamonds are expected to be unloaded in Venice, and Carla is the suspected bag lady.
Slipping into designer shoes and donning her sleuth-in-training cap, Carla sets out in a city of secrets that everyone knows, to solve a diamond caper with more twists and turns than the Venetian labyrinth of narrow streets and canals.
The Good Thief’s Guide to Venice by Chris Ewan
Charlie Howard – struggling crime-writer by day, talented thief by night – has gone straight. But holing himself up in a crumbling palazzo in Venice to concentrate on his next novel hasn’t got rid of the itch in his fingers. And to make matters worse, a striking Italian beauty has just broken into his apartment and made off with his most prized possession, leaving a puzzling calling card in its place. It looks as though kicking the habit of a lifetime will be much more of a challenge than Charlie thought. Sneaking out into Venice’s maze of murky canals, Charlie’s attempts to tame a cat burglar embroil him in a plot that is far bigger and more explosive than he could ever have imagined.
Alibi by Joseph Kanon
The year is 1946. A stunned Europe is beginning its slow recovery from the ravages of World War II. Adam Miller has come to Venice to visit his widowed mother and forget the horrors he witnessed as a US Army war crimes investigator in Germany. But when Adam falls in love with Claudia, a Jewish woman scarred by her devastating experiences during the war, he is forced to confront a Venice haunted by atrocities it would rather forget.
Beneath the dream-like facade he discovers a city in which everyone was compromised by occupation, not least Gianni Maglione, the suave and enigmatic Venetian who is both his mother’s new suitor and the man responsible for much of Claudia’s suffering. When the troubled past erupts in violent murder, Adam finds himself at the centre of a torturous web in which the most valuable thing is not a stone-cold alibi, but the truth itself.
The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins
An eminent doctor is visited by a desperate woman with a question: am I evil, or insane?
When the letters from an Italian servant to his wife in London suddenly cease, she is convinced he has been murdered.
In the darkened bedroom of a mouldering palazzo by the Grand Canal, an English lord sickens and suddenly dies.
How are these little mysteries connected? Spend the night in Room 14 of Venice’s finest hotel, and find out the truth – if you dare…
Don’t Look Now by Daphne du Maurier
John and Laura have come to Venice to try and escape the pain of their young daughter’s death. But when they encounter two old women who claim to have second sight, they find that instead of laying their ghosts to rest they become caught up in a train of increasingly strange and violent events. The four other haunting, evocative stories in this volume also explore deep fears and longings, secrets and desires: ‘Not After Midnight’, in which a lonely teacher investigates a mysterious American couple; ‘A Border Line Case’, in which a young woman confronts her father’s past and his associations with the IRA; ‘The Way of the Cross’, in which a party of pilgrims to Jerusalem encounter strange phenomena in the Garden of Gethsemane; and ‘The Breakthrough’, in which a scientist claims to be able to trap the soul at the point of death …
Enjoy our selection of crime books and thrillers set in Venice!
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