Marilyn Stasio
Logic aside, Hewson’s preposterous story is told with dashing style, in atmospheric set pieces that capture the theatrical grandeur of Venice and the pockets of miserable squalor behind its splendid facade.
— The New York Times
Publishers Weekly
British author Hewson's wonderfully complex and finely paced fourth crime novel (after 2005's The Sacred Cut) to feature Roman detective Nic Costa and his unconventional partner, Gianni Peroni, finds the pair exiled to Venice, where they look into the case of glassmaker Uriel Arcangelo, who apparently killed his wife, Bella, then committed suicide. Instead of coming to the foreordained conclusion higher authority demands, Costa and Peroni determine, "We're no longer trying to understand the means Uriel Arcangelo used to kill his wife. But why, how and with whom the late Bella appears to have conspired to kill him." An urbane and wealthy Englishman who wants to buy the Isolo di Archangeli glassworks becomes an important suspect. Hewson is particularly strong on characterization, revealing each personality subtly and naturally as he or she reacts to the intricate plot developments. Newcomers as well as series fans will be enthralled. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Exiled from Rome after annoying his superiors (Sacred Cut, 2005), Nic Costa lands in Venetian hot water. In his own understated way, Nic Costa is a committed iconoclast, bound to get in every senior cop's face, even if it's that of the senior cop to whom he now reports. In his own overbearing way, Commissario Gianfranco Randazzo is the very model of a bumptious martinet, unlikely to bond with young Nic over a case of murder. On a tiny private island just off Venice, Bella and Uriel Arcangelo, members of a once-rich and powerful family, are found dead after an explosion in their glass-making furnace. Their deaths are only partly accidental, insists Commissario Randazzo: Uriel murdered his wife and met his own fiery fate thereafter. He orders an investigation to support this conclusion and adds a baleful warning about the dire consequences of disobeying his order. Nic naturally begins to wonder whether something's rotten in the upper echelons of the Questura, especially after villainous Englishman Hugo Massiter returns from an earlier adventure. Handsome and worldly Hugo, a closet sociopath, is as usual up to his eyeballs in cruelty, greed and the complicity of a certain crooked commissario. Pitted against them, Nic finds himself and much that he holds dear-his girlfriend, career and value system-imperiled. An irresistible protagonist and an attractive prose style are burdened by a hundred pages too many.
OCT/NOV 07 - AudioFile
It’s obvious that David Hewson is fond of his two main characters, Italian cops. Saul Reichlin gives the two cops voices filled with human qualities often lost in the fictional police officer. These men see the gray areas, not just the law. They question everything, including their superiors; in fact, this is the reason that Nic Costa and Gianni Peroni have been banished to Venice from their beloved Rome. A double murder on the glassblowing island of Murano appears simple—the authorities wish it to stay that way—but it grows complex. Though Reichlin has slight trouble with Venetian place names, his characterizations—from the old smokers on city benches to the beautiful young women—are masterful. The plot is as twisted as a Venetian street, and the lessons learned are life-changing for the characters. B.H.B. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
