All Entries in the "The Garden of Evil" Category
The sixth Costa is hailed as ‘the best yet’
The sixth Nic Costa novel, The Garden of Evil, is winning rave responses from the critics, including coveted starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist, the magazine of the American Library Association. PW describes the work as ‘this dark jewel of a thriller’. Booklist’s Bill Ott declares, ‘Arturo Pérez-Reverte has long set the gold standard for mixing history, mystery, and modern life into literary stews of mouthwatering flavor and incredible subtlety, but it’s time to agree that Hewson now shares that position—and is on the verge of claiming it outright.’
The Garden of Evil on the Page 99 Test
The Page 99 test is an interesting web site that asks authors to look at a single page of one of their books - 69 or 99 - and try to put what’s there in the context of the whole work. It’s run in tandem with the Campaign for the American Reader, ‘an independent initiative to encourage more reader to read more books’.
I’m happy to say you will find Page 99 of The Garden of Evil there, with my comments right now, and listed on the Campaign for the American Reader web site. Thanks to everyone associated with them for this opportunity.
Watch the new video on The Garden of Evil
The sixth Nic Costa book is now the subject of a twelve minute video at Blip TV. Just click on the link below to watch it now. A shorter version is also available on Youtube.
The Garden of Evil gallery
I deliberately decided to focus the entire story of The Garden of Evil in a very small area, part of Rome north of the Pantheon which, in Caravaggio’s time was known as ‘Ortaccio’, an area of rough bars, brothels, and home to many criminals and artists too, the painter included. This gives you a flavour of a part of the city which is still wonderfully chaotic and a little run-down in places today. You can also see some of the talking statues featured in the book, which were used to communicate messages during the censored times of the Popes. To find out more about them go here.
A map of Ortaccio
Some of the key locations in The Garden of Evil. Click for a larger version
View Larger Map
Audio slideshow
Click below for an audio slideshow narrated by the author, showing some of the locations that appear in The Garden of Evil.
Caravaggio revisited: The Garden of Evil
The picture contained a frightful beauty, one which burned so brightly that, once witnessed, could never be unseen… No one could take their eyes off the painting. Even the presence of two corpses, one clearly murdered, the other dead in strange and suspicious circumstances, did nothing to distract their attention from the canvas at that moment…
In a hidden studio in an ancient area of Rome where the Vatican liked to keep an eye on the city’s prostitutes, an art expert from the Louvre is found dead in front of one of the most beautiful paintings that Nic Costa has ever seen – an unknown Caravaggio masterpiece.
But before long tragedy will strike far closer to home. The main suspect’s identity is known, but he remains untouchable – protected in his grand palazzo by a fleet of lawyers and a sinister cult known as the Ekstasists.
If Costa and his team can crack the reasons for the cult’s existence, he may well stand a chance of nailing the murderer. But the mystery will take him right back to Caravaggio himself and the reasons the artist had to flee Rome and a sentence of death four centuries before….
Available in the UK from Pan Macmillan now and in the US from Bantam Dell in July 2008, where the book has received a coveted starred review from Publishers Weekly.