Pellestrina is an island in northern Italy, forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea, lying south west of the Lido.

The island is 11 kilometres (7 miles) long and has since the eighteenth century been bounded to its seaward side by large embankments.

[citation needed] Donna Leon's crime fiction novel A Sea of Troubles (2001)[2] takes place on Pellestrina.

The protagonist, Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venice police, must solve the murders of two clam fishermen off the shore of Pellestrina and encounters great difficulty conducting an investigation when faced with the island's close-knit community, bound together by a code of loyalty and a suspicion of outsiders.

Cenzo Vianelli, the hero of The Girl from Venice (2016), a novel written by Martin Cruz Smith, lives and works as a fisherman in Pellestrina in 1945.