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 [...]

Lucifer’s photo gallery

A confession… these are not my original research pictures from writing Lucifer’s Shadow, but pictures taken on later visits. My first set of pictures for the book were shot on film… and lost when a Venetian photo shop destroyed the negatives.

Lucifer’s Shadow audio book now available on Audible

UK readers can now listen to the audiobook of the standalone Venetian novel, Lucifer’s Shadow, on Audible, part of the growing David Hewson collection on the downloadable audio service. You will find a number of titles on on both Audible US and Audible UK. But please note that due to rights complexities Lucifer’s Shadow is [...]