For newcomers to Audible… this is a very simple and easy to use download service for audio books which will play back on iPods and MP3 players, as well as computers. The cheapest way to buy books is to look at the various subscription options.The Audible version is an unabridged reading of the original book produced by Clipper Audio, and lasts 18 hours.

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

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.