The Seventh Sacrament 
Another world beneath the streets of Rome(2)
It begins on one of Rome’s least-known hills, the Aventino, in the public piazza fronting the mansion of the Knights of Malta. There a curious keyhole to the knights’ estate reveals an astonishing view, a direct line across the Tiber to the dome of St. Peters in the distance.
For seven-year-old Alessio Bramante the act of peeking through the keyhole on his way to school each day is a ritual, a way of establishing a bond with his difficult, distant father, one of Rome’s most famous archaeologists, Giorgio Bramante. Then one day, after an unexpected visit to one of Giorgio’s underground excavations, Alessio disappears. A group of students who had slipped into the site, an ancient Mithraic temple, attract the blame. A tragedy occurs. Alessio is never found, and it’s his father who goes to jail.
Fourteen years later, in an arcane shrine by the Tiber known as the Little Museum of Purgatory, a tee-shirt belonging to Bramante’s son begins to show fresh bloodstains…
Reviews of The Seventh Sacrament
Booklist, the Americal Library Association’s influential magazine, says of The Seventh Sacrament…
Hewson’s uncompromising trio of antiestablishment Roman cops—Nic Costa, Gianni Peroni, and their boss, Leo Falcone—are back in the Eternal City and up to their necks in another vat of hot water. As with the previous four entries in this always-captivating series, the crime on the front burner—a dead body discovered in a Roman church—is merely the entrée point to a case with tentacles extending deep into ancient history…Hewson keeps his readers securely tethered to a narrative lifeline; like Theseus on the trail of the minotaur, we follow the plot around countless blind corners but never lose our way out of the maze. The interplay between Hewson’s three cops—and between them and the especially rich supporting cast—lift this novel far above the plot-driven Da Vinci Code and its many imitators. A superb mix of history, mystery, and humanity.
The hidden city: underground Rome
Some questions never go away. One I get constantly is, ‘Why did you choose to set your books in Rome?’ The honest answer is I didn’t; Rome chose me, clubbing me over the head one day when I happened to be there editing a book about somewhere else entirely. I’ve now completed seven Costa novels, and still have two more to go under my present contract… and hopefully lots after that.
The Seventh Sacrament gallery
This is a selection of photographs I took during the research for The Seventh Sacrament. Many of them cover the area of the Aventino hill where much of the book is set.