Archive for January, 2008
Art, love and music in Venice, ancient and modern
In an ancient burial ground on an island off Venice, a young woman’s casket is pried open, an object is wrenched from her hands, and an extraordinary adventure begins. Crossing centuries, encompassing music, passion and murder, Lucifer’s Shadow gained the ‘highest possible recommendation’ from Bookreporter.com and was hailed as ‘one of the best of 2004′ by Deadly Pleasures.
From the moment he arrives in Venice, Daniel Forster is seduced by the city’s mystery. An earnest young academic, Daniel has come for a summer job cataloguing a private collector’s library.
But when Daniel’s employer sends him to buy a stolen violin from a petty thief, a chain reaction of violence and deception ignites. Suddenly Daniel is drawn into a police investigation-and a tempest swirling around a beautiful woman, a mysterious palazzo, and a lost musical masterpiece dating back centuries.
With each step he takes, Daniel unwittingly retraces a journey that began in 1733, when another young man came to Venice. And when, in this realm of intrigue and beauty, two lovers came face-to-face with a killer-and a mystery was born.
Separated by centuries, two tales of passion, betrayal, and danger collide. Sweeping the reader from the intrigue of Vivaldi’s Venice to the gritty world of a modern cop, from the genius of a prodigy to the greed of a killer, Lucifer’s Shadow builds to a shattering crescendo-and one last, breathtaking surprise.
Richly enjoyable, sophisticated and beguiling entertainment. Sunday Times
Venice is painted beautifully, both then and now, and this would be a splendid book to read after you have taken the evening air in the Piazza San Marco, or when gliding down the Grand Canal. The Times
This intelligent and highly detailed thriller by British author Hewson (A Season for the Dead, 2003) rivals Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel (1994) in historical intricacy, complexity of motive, and multileveled storytelling. Booklist
Reviews of Lucifer’s Shadow
Lucifer’s Shadow was judged one of the best crime/mystery novels of 2004 by the very influential US Deadly Pleasures magazine
Dick Adler, Chicago Tribune
Good mysteries set in Venice are a growth industry: Every writer wants an excuse to do some research in that amazing, haunted city. And David Hewson’s new book is one of the best in recent memory - not as police-oriented as Donna Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series or Hewson’s own A Season for the Dead (although there is an interesting female cop at the edges of it), but much more a character study of how Venice shapes the lives and deaths of its visitors.
Hewson has created a brave and fascinating double strand of linked plots… a breathtaking juggling act spanning more than 250 years, featuring a missing Guarneri violin and a magnificent, unsigned piece of music that even the great Vivaldi realizes is beyond his abilities.
Tasty little insider jokes abound: The 1733 hero wonders in a letter why the pompous owner of a popular coffeehouse called Triofante “doesn’t just name the place after himself and have done with it.” The fact that the 1733 owner’s name was Floriano Francesconi, and the present-day coffeehouse (now the home of the $20 cup of espresso) is named Florian’s, is part of the book’s pleasure. Vivaldi is a sadly grotesque but still powerful musical force, and even the French writer Rousseau comes in for his share of needling.Add horribly believable scenes of violence, enough sex to ensure the city’s reputation for romance, as well as great gobbets of food and scenery both splendid and squalid, and you begin to see why Lucifer’s Shadow is unputdownable.
Joe Hartlaub, BookReporter
Delacorte Press has somewhat defied conventional wisdom by publishing two works by a new (to these shores) author within a few months of each other. This was no doubt done with the knowledge that anyone who had read A Season for the Dead would welcome more Hewson, and welcome it immediately. For myself, it would be fine if every month brought the arrival of a new Hewson novel. There is no one who is doing this type of work - work that by turns has echoes of Christie, Dickens, O. Henry and even Poe on each page, and yet is unshakably contemporary and unmistakably Hewson. Lucifer’s Shadow, set in different time periods, is itself a timeless work, a classic. Highest possible recommendation.
Margaret Cannon, Globe & Mail, Toronto
This superb thriller… isn’t a Nic Costa, and it’s set in Venice, not Rome. But once again, Hewson takes us into the heart and sensibility of a city. This time there are two parallel stories, 250 years apart, and they both work beautifully.
..All this buildup sets up the story of a search that weaves the two times together with a murder, a mystery and a missing masterpiece. Hewson sets his scene masterfully, using the sights, colours, sounds and history of Venice to make the city a character, and it all works perfectly. Nic Costa is great, but nobody will miss him here.
Jennifer Baker, Booklist
This intelligent and highly detailed thriller by British author Hewson (A Season for the Dead, 2003) rivals Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel (1994) in historical intricacy, complexity of motive, and multileveled storytelling. Masterfully plotted, the novel alternates between present-day and eighteenth-century Venice, following flawed and unwary innocents down the devil’s path, tempted by visions of fame, personal glory, and love. In 1733, a wealthy patron of the arts supplies a lovely and talented Jewish woman with a Guarneri violin and the venue for her debut as a concert soloist in a world hostile to both women and Jews.
In modern Venice, a young scholar is manipulated into selling a stolen antique violin and pretending authorship of a brilliant concerto recently unearthed in his employer’s basement. Both stories follow naive young men who fall in love with gifted and troubled women musicians, then become involved in tracking killers who leave behind only traces of their female victims. The pungent canals of beautiful Venice carry readers on a metaphorical journey, tracing the spread of evil through ghetto, church, concert hall, and even the mansions of the elite. Prepare for a devilish ride in which beauty masks wickedness, and righteousness is relative.
Sunday Times
Richly enjoyable, sophisticated and beguiling entertainment.
The Times
Venice is painted beautifully, both then and now, and this would be a splendid book to read after you have taken the evening air in the Piazza San Marco, or when gliding down the Grand Canal.
Omaha World-Herald
English author David Hewson sweeps readers into the canals, grand halls and aging villas of Venice as two tales set hundreds of years apart unfold. Moving between the intertwined stories, Hewson tests whether readers-and his protagonists-know who is trustworthy and who is the Venetian Lucifer, with the ability to hide his real motives behind an engaging smile.
‘A man must recognize Satan when he sees him,’ one of the characters warns. ‘Particularly in a city such as this.’
In writing this thriller, Hewson was inspired by his interest in music and in the Venice that most tourists don’t get to see. The book revolves around an antique violin and a mysterious but masterly piece of classical music discovered in a printer’s basement. Hewson mixes in romance, murder and a police investigation to ratchet up the intrigue. The book takes readers along to solve the modern-day mystery as it simultaneously reveals the historical tale of the violin and music.
Uniting the two stories are the Venetian landmarks and villas that serve as a backdrop to both. The result is a real page-turner that keeps readers pushing forward to find out how the two tales end and intersect. Hewson hides his devilish characters behind smiles with enough art that when their true character is revealed, it comes as sort of a surprise. Hewson’s work has been compared before to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and, with this story, the comparison is suiting-but not because of story line. Hewson jumps back and forth between the modern-day and historical tale. Just like Brown and in suspense-novel fashion, he gets one plot line moving just to switch over to the other. The result keeps the reader eagerly awaiting the next development.
One of Hewson’s strengths in the book is his ability to capture Venice and show a side to the city not found in travel books. But Lucifer’s Shadow requires the reader to slow down and take in the sights; they are important to the story line as well. The ending doesn’t wrap everything up in a nice little package, inviting readers to make some of the final connections themselves. The result is a nice, easy read that most will find a devilishly good way to while away the last days of summer.
The first serial audio thriller
Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a priceless, previously-unknown manuscript by Frederic Chopin. Within the notes of this work, which was originally found and hidden by the Nazis during World War II, lies a secret that has left death in its wake – and could kill tens of thousands more.
The Chopin Manuscript is a unique collaboration among 15 distinguished international thriller writers who came together to create a single audiobook with each author contributing a chapter to the ongoing story. The book is serialised and is hailed as the first-ever audio serial book.
Jeffery Deaver conceived the characters and the setting and put the plot in motion with the first chapter. David Hewson takes threads from this opening section to produce a second chapter which spins the story out of its opening in Warsaw to Rome, and sets it on the way to a climax in the US. From there the story was turned over to thirteen authors – including Lee Child, Lisa Scottoline, Joseph Finder, S. J. Rozan, and P. J. Parrish – who each wrote a chapter that propelled the story along. Along the way the plot took twists and turns as each author lent his or her own imprint on the tale. Characters were added as the action moved around the world — and the stakes got higher and higher. The book wrapped with Deaver writing the final two chapters bringing The Chopin Manuscript to its explosive conclusion.
The plot unfolds like this: Former war crimes investigator Harold Middleton possesses a priceless, previously-unknown manuscript by Frederic Chopin. Within the notes of this work, which was originally found and hidden by the Nazis during World War II, lies a secret that has left death in its wake – and could kill tens of thousands more. As Middleton races to unlock the mystery of the manuscript, he is accused of murder, pursued by federal agents and targeted by assassins. But the greatest threat comes from a man known only as Faust - a shadowy figure from Middleton’s past.
The Chopin Manuscript was the world’s first audio thriller, delivered serially. Readers received a new installment of 2-3 chapters every Tuesday, beginning September 25th. with the final instalment delivered on November 13th. It proved one of the fastest-selling audio titles of 2007, and a sequel is now under discussion.
The true story of a fight for rural England
I thought my journalism days were behind me. But sometimes life has a habit of turning things around in ways you least expect. In December 2005 I was in Rome researching what was to become the sixth Nic Costa novel, which will appear in 2008. Out of the blue I took a phone call from his wife which revealed that the large London university Imperial College had very big designs on the area where I was lucky enough to live.
The next ten months saw an extraordinary battle by ordinary people pitched against an army of well-paid professional developers trying to turn some of the most beautiful - and protected - countryside in England over to the bulldozer. They were just ordinary citizens appalled by what was being planned, in secret and with the covert support of our own public representatives. The most extraordinary part of all is… we won. After concerted local opposition and a string of revelations on save-wye.org , the web-site I set up as a public forum to discuss Imperial’s plans, the project collapsed.
You can read this amazing saga in full on the save-wye web-site, with all the original articles there as they appeared. But this story deserves more, not least because there are many other people out there who are desperate to know how Wye won where so many others failed. The answer is through luck, determination and some very single-minded people. So in some ways this isn’t a story that far from fiction at all… though every last word is true, even though I occasionally had to pinch himself when reminded of that fact.
SAVED is a full length account of the true story of this campaign from its opening to close. It’s not hagiography or triumphalist, because this may be a short-lived victory. Nor does it seek to hide the mistakes that were made along the way, because one important thing we learned during this fight was that honest and openness were often the most powerful weapons the Wye campaigners had - and sometimes the only ones.
I’m grateful to everyone who helped with the Wye campaign, in particular my colleague in the site, Justin Williams, without whom this story would not have had such a satisfactory ending.
What people said about Saved
Robin Page, the countryside writer and broadcaster who was for many years the host of One Man and his Dog, says of the book, ‘David Hewson writes thrillers. Saved is a real life thriller, exposing the sham of “local democracy”. A must for all those wanting to save their countryside and communities from the concrete mixers and the planning fixers.”‘
Jonathon Porritt, the well-known environmentalist who is now Founder Director of Forum for the Future, writes, ‘This is a fascinating book, full of insights into the workings of local politics, new, web-based ways of campaigning, different environmental tactics, and institutions as powerful as they are unaccountable.
‘As a result of a wonderfully effective campaign, this little corner of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in Kent is safe for now. But as the author himself points out, the agents of the kind of wholly unsustainable development that is still eroding our countryside will never give up and never go away. With local democracy in such a state of disrepair, in so many parts of the land, many more battles of this kind will still need to be fought.’
Shaun Spiers, chief executive, Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, said, ‘Imperial College’s science park plan for Wye was in essence a smash and grab operation, designed to let the university cash in on its greenfield AONB landholding around a beautiful Kent village.
That it failed was largely thanks to the website save-wye, the brief but gripping history of which is chronicled in this book. We in CPRE were delighted to offer the local campaigners help and support.
There is much in Saved to worry countryside campaigners, but also much to cheer them. The role of the local council is depressing, as is the failure of most local media to question the developer’s official line.
Yet the book also shows that schemes such as Wye Park can be defeated, however impressive their official backing, and that journalism and the democratic process in their truest forms can triumph when the established media and body politic have gone bad.’
Professor Roy Greenslade, former editor of the Daily Mirror, and now Professor of Journalism at City University, London, and one of the country’s leading media commentators, has kindly contributed the foreword to the book.
In it he writes, ‘…this is not a story about Nimbyism. It is about right versus wrong; about transparency versus secrecy; about truth versus lies; about democracy versus authoritarianism.’
You can read this as a pdf file available below (60K). Just a reminder that, if you find yourself in the village, copies of Saved will usually be available in both Wye News and the New Flying Horse, and at the Timber Batts in Bodsham, as well as through the usual book trade channels. It’s a lovely village to visit…still.
You can read Roy Greenslade’s introduction to the book in full by clicking the link below.
What we fought for
This is the landscape of Wye and its surrounding countryside. Much of it would have disappeared under modern, mass housing if the Wye plan had gone ahead.
A standalone thriller, set in no-man’s-land
Bierce was a happily married cop with a bright future. Then one sunny day in July his wife, Miriam, and their young son, Ricky, were savagely beaten to death. Bierce was convicted of the murder of his family. Languishing on Death Row twenty-three years later, he still has no memory of the incident.
With his execution only seconds away, he is suddenly, inexplicably, released. But the world has moved on without him and the city he knew has become a strange and dangerous place.
Returning to the only home he knows, Bierce meets Alice Loong - a tough, half Chinese woman who can guide him through the confusing new world of the twenty-first century. But it soon becomes clear that Alice is hiding dark secrets of her own.
After the horrifying discovery of a corpse nailed to a post outside Bierce’s house, the pair go on the run, pursued by dangerous enemies. Bierce now knows for certain that he was released to be the pawn in some vicious game he doesn’t understand. He knows, too, that he still doesn’t remember what happened the night his wife and son died. And that, perhaps, he is not as innocent as he’d like to think.
The Promised Land was new territory for me a first person tale that is compelling sequential in nature, an experiment in narrative that is half dream, half nightmare, begging to be read in a single sitting.
It’s a story about feeling old, lost and frightened. And like the Costa series, it’s fundamentally a story about a human being trying to find his way home.
Published in May 2007 in the UK by Pan Macmillan.