In a thriller of astounding menace and power, the acclaimed author of A Season for the Dead returns to the landscape he has made his ownthe seething landscape of modern-day Romewhere ancient crimes lie hidden beneath colorful, bustling avenues. Here a teenage girl has disappeared, a detective is exploring a 2000-year-old ritualand an astonishing mystery is about to unravel in a city of secrets and rage....
The Villa of Mysteries
In Romes crowded Campo dei Fiori, a woman rushes up to two carabinieri lounging in their sunglasses and uniforms, insisting that her sixteen-year-old daughter has just been abducted. Detective Nic Costa sees the scene unfold and intervenes. Because Costa knows what the two officers dont: that in the morgue at Romes police headquarters, a forensic pathologist is examining the strange, mummified corpse of another
girl, whose disappearance and death bear haunting similarities....
Police pathologist Teresa Lupo is Nics colleague, friend, and his only equal when it comes to breaking the rules to get results, whatever the cost. Now, after years of living with the dead, Teresa insists that her superiors move quickly to save a life. Poring over the body of the girl in the morgue, she has found too many similarities between the girls, including a unique, leering tattoo. Lupo is sure that the vanished girl is headed for a bizarre ancient Bacchanalia involving virgins and sacrificial murdera ritual that is only days away.
As Nic and Teresa claw at the case from two sidesand as Nic finds himself at once puzzled and beguiled by the missing girls seductive mothera chilling picture is beginning to emerge...of secret relationships and sexual depravity, organized crime and unimaginable corruption. With the clock ticking down on a young girls life, Nic and Teresa are about to make the most horrifying discovery of allin a pit of human darkness, where an age-old malevolence still endures, evil has consumed innocence...and a very modern vengeance has begun.
A spellbinding mix of suspense, forensic science, and human drama, The Villa of Mysteries will catch you off guard at every turna novel that is at once heartbreaking and impossible to put down.
From Publishers Weekly
This second, slightly uneven entry in British writer Hewson's Nic Costa series (A Season for the Dead) picks up as the Italian detective reluctantly returns to work following a six-month hiatus after being wounded and losing his partner. Stable nowbut not fully recoveredhe and new partner Gianni Peroni (also damaged goods) are assigned to investigate a somewhat odd archeological find. While sifting for treasure along the banks of the Tiber, an American couple discovered the body of an adolescent girl, perfectly preserved in the rich peat. Apparently the sacrificial victim in some ancient Dionysian ritual, the girl sports an unusual tattoo and was buried with a coin in her mouth. As is soon revealed, though, her death was recent. The plot thickens when British tourist Miranda Julius reports that a mysterious man on a motorbike has abducted her 16-year-old daughter, Suzi, who resembles the dead girl. Costa and Peroni are soon joined by anti-Mafia agent Rachele D'Amato, though it's unclear how the mob is involved in the affair. Hewson does a stellar job bringing all these disparate characters together, but Costa misses and misinterprets obvious clues, asks too few questions and wraps the case up too quickly, straining credibility. Though not as tight as Hewson's first Nic Costa title, this is an atmospheric follow-up, steeped in dark ritual.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Once again capturing the imagination of historical mystery lovers, the author of Lucifer's Shadow [BKL My 1 04] brings an ancient Dionysian ritual to light as a clue in this riveting and fast-paced thriller. Hoping to score an archaeological status symbol in an Italian peat bog near Rome, a drunken American couple dredges up instead the beautiful preserved body of what seems to be a 2,000-year-old sacrificial victim. Amid departmental infighting and territorial feuds between government agencies, the Roman police and morgue pathologists discover a link between the bog body and the disappearance of a young tourist: both were involved in a cult that worships Dionysus, the god of lust and debauchery. With all their leads ending in violent death and time running out, detectives Costa and Peroni unearth a web of Mob cover-ups and crooked cops in a puzzling drama involving sex rites and drugs. Every character hides a dark secret that, like Rome's ancient mysteries, seems to lurk just beyond reach. A complex and satisfying mystery from a master plot maker. Jennifer Baker
Copyright American Library Association. All rights reserved