Donna Leon is so knowledgeable in the workings of the Italian government offices, subterfuge and bribery and peppers her books with little known facts. Children under the age of 14 cannot be prosecuted so children are often the ones who rob and commit acts of burglary. Most of these in the book were orchestrated by Gypsies.
From the cover:
One cold and rainy morning, the body of a gypsy girl is found floating in a canal. It looks like the girl may have fallen from a nearby roof while fleeing an apartment she had robbed, but no one has reported a missing child or the theft of the gold ring she carries. The novel explores the people and cultures at the margins of Italian life, the secretive world of the Romani people, scores of thousands of whom exist both inside and outside of society. Brunetti finds himself struggling with both institutional prejudice and entrenched criminality as he attempts to solve the crime.
