Donna Leon (born 1942 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American crime novelist best known for the Commissario Guido Brunetti series, set in Venice and written in English. Before turning to fiction she taught English literature in several countries, including Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and Italy.
She lived in Venice for some thirty years before moving to Switzerland in the mid-2010s. The Brunetti books have been translated into dozens of languages; the ninth, Friends in High Places, won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger in 2000, and she received the Corine Literature Prize in 2003.
