Doctored Evidence: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

Donna Leon's new novel once again follows Commissario Guido Brunetti through the winding streets of contemporary Venice as he throws open the doors to a case his fellow policemen would rather leave closed.
After the body of a wealthy elderly woman is found brutally murdered in her Venetian apartment, the police suspect her maid, who has disappeared and is heading for her native Romania. When the woman is approached by the border police as her train is leaving Italy, she makes a run for it and is killed as she crosses the tracks. She has a considerable sum of money on her and her papers are obvious forgeries. Case closed.
But when the old woman's neighbor returns from a business trip in London, it becomes clear that the maid could not have had time to kill the old woman before catching her train and that the money on her was not stolen. Commissario Guido Brunetti decides - unofficially - to take on the case himself.
At home, Brunetti's loving wife, Paola, reads the chapter in her daughter's religious instruction book about the Seven Deadly Sins. As he investigates the case, Brunetti realizes that this is probably not a crime motivated by Greed, rather that the motive may have more to do with the temptations of Lust. But perhaps Brunetti is following a false trail and thinking of the wrong sin altogether.