Summary
Never has Jane Langton been more enchanting or thrilling than in her fourteenth Homer Kelly mystery, The Thief of Venice. In a setting splendidly evoked by her line drawings, characters from the wryly innocent to the brilliantly sinister play out a serpentine story of divine mystery, immortal art, and mortal remains.The seductive city of Venice has lured Homer Kelly to a rare books conference and his wife, Mary, into the streets of the city, armed with a camera. While Homer basks in the Biblioteca Marciana, Mary's snapshots reveal more than she intended. In one of her simple tourist images of San Marco, gondolas on jade-green canals, the Rialto Bridge, the labyrinthine streets, the house of Tintoretto, and the Ghetto Vecchio, appears the figure of a missing woman. Thus begins a case that leads to a bona fide miracle and the discovery of a treasure painfully recalling the fate of Venetian Jews in World War II, culminating in an elaborate chase across a maze of ancient bridges as the acqua alta water rises up out of the canals, threatening all Venetians!
Jane Langton was born Jane Gillson in Belmont, Massachusetts on December 30, 1922. She received a bachelor's degree in art history in 1944 and a master's degree in art history in 1945 from the University of Michigan. She received a second master's degree in art history from Radcliffe College in 1948. She studied at the Boston Museum School from 1958 to 1959.
Her writing career began with children's books. Her first book, The Majesty of Grace, was published in 1961. She illustrated several of her children's books. She wrote a young adult series entitled the Hall Family Chronicles. The fourth book in the series, The Fledgling, was a Newbery Honor book.
She also wrote an adult mystery series entitled the Homer Kelly mysteries. The fifth book in the series, Emily Dickinson Is Dead, received a Nero Wolfe Award and an Edgar Award. In 2017, she received the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award for the series. She died from complications of a respiratory condition on December 22, 2018 at the age of 95.
(Bowker Author Biography)