Initially, I was excited about reading this book, however, the second plot line involving the political election started to really turn me off. The more I read, the more I started skimming over the subplot of the election. I found the bumbling about with the detectives, whilst trying to find the ...
I am an avid detective story fan, especially when the story is set in a place I love and the detective involved is thoughtful, insightful and intelligent – someone I would enjoy knowing outside the pages of a book. Donna Leon’s Venetian detective Guido Brunetti is the prime example I have encount...
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Historical mysteries, especially a combination of a present day mystery mirroring a history from the past, are my favorites, and this one kept me very interested throughout. Personally I was more interested in the present day mystery, because I found it more com...
Nic Costa series, #4If you haven't read the previous books in the series, stop here. If you have, you'll remember that at the end of the last one (The Sacred Cut), the main characters, Nic Costa, Gianni Peroni and their boss Leo Falcone, have been exiled to Venice for awhile for a slight matte...
Second in David Hewson's very good series featuring Nic Costa. I beg to differ with many people about this book -- I thought it was quite good, and I've already bought and plan to read next Hewson's Sacred Cut, 3rd in the series. I really enjoy a good mystery and this book did not disappoint. I w...
The year 2003 saw the appearance of Dan Brown’s second novel featuring his Robert Langdon character (‘The Da Vinci Code’ however was the first to be published) and the resultant ‘jumping on the bandwagon of a large number of authors trying to emulate the commercial success of that novel. I’m not ...
I think so far this is my least favourite of the Nic Costa series. I have read 4 of them. I would suggest that this could be a case of an author starting well and then fading with a hero that they should have stopped writing about, but I have read Books 1-3 (this is book 3) and book 5 (I read the...
From Publishers Weekly The intricate fifth thriller from British author Hewson to feature Roman detective Nic Costa (after 2006's The Lizard's Bite) artfully weaves several points-of-view as it shifts between past and present. Fourteen years after seven-year-old Alessio Bramante, the son of an em...
Semana Santa must be a lot of fun... if you know nothing about the real Holy Week in Seville Spain. I understand there is such a thing as creative license but there are just too many errors! Bullfights have nothing to do with the Holy Week (thank Goodness), it is a completely different festival c...
Non c’è tregua per la squadra investigativa di Nic Costa, l’intraprendente poliziotto romano amante dell’arte sempre alle prese con casi collegati ad elementi antichi; anche questa volta infatti Nic si trova ad intervenire in un caso a dir poco complesso, una serie di omicidi apparentemente colle...
She’d worked with Falcone’s people too long and it showed. The two of them were back in their dishevelled corner on the narcotics floor, running through the intelligence records she’d pulled to try to help in the Gabriel case. He looked into her dark, sceptical eyes and sa...
Tonny and Willy Kok lurked by the door whining to be released. Vos told them straight: no one was going anywhere until he found out what had happened. Then he got the story. The Kok brothers had been on their way back from a few beers in one of the harbour bars. When they ...
Which meant the guilt hurt even more when a hard winter sun flooded through the flimsy curtains of the gable window and brought the bleak world with it.Exhaustion, physical and nervous, had taken its toll. The intriguing but evasive police officer Vos baffled her. Did he know or suspect more than...
The tallest was blacked up head to toe, with tall goat-like horns, and looked near-naked. He was carrying a big stereo on his shoulder, cavorting like the rest of them to a deafening pop song. His teeth were dyed red and he smiled a lot. They all did. Red teeth. Lurid costumes. Cocky attitude. Ko...
She was still in her cell, still in the prison suit. ‘My client moves for her release,’ the lawyer said. ‘She’s willing to cooperate within reason. You have no proof against her. She denies the charges. Since the question of guilt’s undecided she shouldn’t be here.’ ‘Tell that to the judge,’ Bülo...
IT wasn't the kind of transport he would previously have associated with Tom Black.Physically, he was a big, powerful man. Costa looked at the man's shaken, lost face in the mirror as they pulled away. He seemed different now Josh Jonah was gone. Uncertain of himself. Desperate. Black had to stru...