Dante's Numbers

• The Romans go abroad

  Every once in a while I feel the need to kick my little cast of characters out of Rome. They belong to me. I can do this. True, they have discovered the notion of free will and often go off to do things of which I don’t approve subsequently. But shifting your characters around a bit from time to time adds interest, lets you see other sides of their personalities, and raises new challenges for an author. Every book is a new challenge. If it isn’t, it’s not worth doing.

  For the seventh book in the Costa series they go on the road again. In the fourth book, The Lizard’s Bite, they found themselves in Venice, where they were very much fish out of water. For the first third or so of Dante’s Numbers they are still in Rome, at a glitzy cinema industry event, the launch of a controversial movie based on The Divine Comedy.

  Then the team find themselves catching a plane for the first time since this series began. It’s a long journey too, to San Francisco, where the rest of the book takes place. Why did I choose this city rather than somewhere else in Italy? I’m sure they will do some local travelling in the future. But for this book I wanted to see how they would behave in an environment with which they are culturally familiar through the media – and the media have a part to play in this story. San Francisco is an extraordinarily European city in many ways, and it struck - while I was teaching at the Book Passage Mystery Writers’ Conference as it happened - that it would be interesting to discover how Costa and crew would react to the place.

  Most of the action is confined to areas that tourists tend not to chance upon, principally round the Marina and Cow Hollow. If you want to get a taste of some the locations, Roman and San Franciscan, take a look at the photo gallery below.

  Posted on 28/01/08 | no comments | read on

• Dante’s Numbers… some locations

  Here are some of the key locations in the seventh Nic Costa novel. Film buffs with an eye for detail may be able to guess one of the elements of the book from these shots.

  Posted on 30/01/08 | no comments | read on