We asked bestselling author Donna Leon about her life and work.Her detective novels featuring Commissario Brunetti have become some of the biggest international sellers of recent years.... and that, even though Donna Leon only began writing at the age of 50. The American-born writer has spent most of her life abroad ever since she graduated from university. Since the early 1980’s she's lived in Venice, where her fictional crimes take place.   When she's not busy working on her next book, she's a confirmed opera lover who is likely to be travelling to see a new performance somewhere in the world. How would you describe your character?I'm an optimist and I'm happy. Her favourite music is Handel's Alcina. Her favourite book is Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.Her favourite food is pumpkin risotto. What makes you happiest and why?If I can choose two things, I would choose baroque opera because it makes me joyous to listen to it and the reading of good books, because it makes me think. What is your secret passion?At 60 one has so few passions secret or open. Probably my hopeless worship of opera singers and what they can do. Who is your personal hero and why?I can't think of a heroic person. I think there are heroic people, I think the heroic people are the people who get up in the morning and go to work. And come home at night and play with the kids and don't compain about their life and just get on with the business of life and taking care of their children. I think those are heroic people. What qualities do you admire most in a friend?That they make me think, that they make me laugh and that I know they will never lie to me. Who will you always be grateful to?I will always be grateful to my friend, the conductor Alan Curtis, because he got me involved in the running of an opera company and it great, glorious fun. Who do you owe an apology?I owe an apology to a little girl on a bicycle in Italian-speaking Switzerland who had a dog that wouldn'...