Review: LUCIFER'S SHADOW, David Hewson

I'm staggered to find that I have been listening to LUCIFER'S SHADOW for nearly a month. You might remember my post in late June where I talked about the fact that the narrator was using an Italian accent which I was having problems coming to terms with. I am happy to report that things got better and that I enjoyed this book immensely. Not surprising that it has taken so long to listen to - it is nearly 18 hours, and I get less than 45 minutes listening time every day!

Book Details:
Paperback: 384 pages, Publisher: Delta (July 26, 2005), ISBN-10: 0385338058, ISBN-13: 978-0385338059

When she died 10 years ago, promising violinist Susanna Gianni was buried on Venice's San Michele with her violin. After 10 years bodies on San Michele are disinterred and disposed of. Small time crook Rizzo has been employed by the Englishman Hugo Massiter to claim the corpse.. Well, he doesn't want the corpse really, just the Guarneri violin. And that's the hook that gets the reader/listener in straight away. Who is this Massiter? How did Susanna Gianni die? Why does he want the violin?

At the same time young English academic Daniel Forster arrives in Venice to do some work for Scacchi, an ailing art collector, the last of the house of Scacchi, a printing house in Venice with a long history.

Jump back now to the Venice of 1733. Vivaldi is conducting a concert in La Pieta. Canaletto is painting the life of Venice. Lorenzo Scacchi, nephew of the printer, has fallen in love with a beautiful violinist, Rebecca Levi, a Jewess whom he smuggles out of the ghetto so she can play in Vivaldi's annual concert.

I strongly believe that the reader needs to go on their own journey of discovery, to experience the book for himself, to be surprised where the author reveals something new.
So I'm not going to recount more of the story, except to tell you that there is a clever interweaving of parallel threads from the two time periods, even parallel characters. An annual concert, a piece of music, a beautiful young violinist, an evil Englishman, a law enforcement officer who is prevented from revealing the truth, are just some of the mirror images to look out for.

This was a book that grew on me, to the point that, as I could feel the end was coming, I felt quite regretful. The narrator Christopher Kay, after I had got attuned to the Italian accent, did an excellent job, and his voice gave me plenty of clues about which character was speaking.

My rating: 4.8

You might be interested in the following:

• David Hewson's "backstory" about LUCIFER'S SHADOW
  he actually tells you more of the story than I have.
• Read the first chapter online at Amazon
• Entries on Library Thing
• Follow David Hewson on Twitter
• David Hewson's blog

The sixth Nic Costa novel, THE GARDEN OF EVIL, was voted the best mystery of 2008 by the American Library Association and was recently shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

My other mini-reviews of Hewson novels

THE SACRED CUT, my rating 4.8
For the first time in two decades, Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by soft snow is the body of an American tourist - her back horribly mutilated.

A SEASON FOR THE DEAD, my rating 4.2
This is the first of the Nic Costa series. As with succeeding novels in the series, the book opens with a dramatic event. Sara Farnese looks up from a manuscript in the Reading Room of the Vatican Library to see a fellow professor approaching her with a bulging plastic bag. He appears to be distressed and is carrying a gun in his other hand. From the bag he tips the skin of her lover, and points the gun at Sara's head. Standing in the colonnades of St. Peter's Square, Rome cops Luca Rossi and his new partner Nic Costa hear of the shooting in the Reading Room on the police scanner. Strictly speaking the Vatican is not in their jurisdiction, but as Nic says, they are just around the corner…

THE LIZARD'S BITE, my rating 4.6
This is the 4th in the Nic Costa series. Detectives from Rome, Nic Costa, Gianni Peroni, and Leo Falcone, have been 'exiled' to Venice, famous for its glassblowing. A terrible fire occurs at the factory of a relatively recently arrived family of Murano glassblowers, the Arcangeli, when their furnace overheats and the furnace manager Uriel Arcangeli spontaneously combusts. Nic and Gianni had been coming to the end of their time in Venice and their return to Rome is postponed so they can prove beyond all doubt that Uriel's death is an accident. For me, Hewson has captured the atmosphere of Venice very well. The story hints at some of the issues currently worrying Venetians, and at the same time the characters of Costa, Peroni and Falcone are expanded so that we get to know them better.

When listening gets complicated

This week I've begun listening to LUCIFER'S SHADOW by David Hewson.
And 40 minutes in, I'm finding it hard to work out what is going on!
The reason? The narrator keeps reading with Italian accent overtones.
I'm finding it difficult to distinguish characters from each other, and when he lapses occasionally into "real" English, my relief is enormous.
There are at least two time periods, and even there I'm having trouble working out whose point of view I am hearing things from.
I hope it gets better, I have nearly 16 hours of listening to do!

Have you ever been put off listening to a book by a similar problem.

If you'd like to read the opening chapter of LUCIFER'S SHADOW then click on the cover image.

The blurb:
In this Venetian thriller, British author Hewson (A Season for the Dead) offers a tantalizing tale of intrigue, murder and sex. Two props propel the action: a concerto penned by a young Jewish woman in 1733 and performed once, anonymously, before its disappearance, and her unique violin. When in the present day this instrument is snatched from an obscure grave and the anonymous concerto is discovered in a long-forgotten hiding place, an innocent English scholar is drawn into an increasingly dangerous game of deception. Through the 18th-century letters and journals of a printer’s apprentice, the reader discovers the secret of the concerto, while Daniel Forster, in Venice to work for an ailing art collector, relives the mystery connected to the beautiful piece of music. The story set during the glory days of Vivaldi is more vivid, compelling and romantic than the contemporary one, as Daniel’s a bit of a cold fish. And if the various elements don’t quite add up to a satisfying whole, the intricate view of Venice with its palazzos and sewers, its concert halls and old Jewish ghetto is more than ample compensation.

Locked-Off Murders

Inspired by fellow blogger Petrona whose latest posting is about "island novels", I decided to investigate my mini-reviews for different sorts of isolation. I've come up with 11 murder mysteries that I've read in the last 3 years or so, that are really variations on the "locked-room" scenario.

On an island

THE LIGHTHOUSE, P.D. James, my rating 5.0
Combe Island off the Cornish coast has a bloodstained history of piracy and cruelty but now, privately owned, it offers respite to over-stressed men and women in positions of high authority who require privacy and guaranteed security. But the peace of Combe is violated when one of the distinguished visitors is bizarrely murdered.

PIG ISLAND, Mo Hayder, my rating 4.8
Journalist Joe Oakes makes his living exposing supernatural hoaxes. The video of the 'the devil of Pig Island' has been around for a couple of years and Joe is absolutely sure that it is a hoax. Rumours of Satanic rituals taking place on Pig Island still proliferate, particularly among the mainland locals who resent the fact that the island is no longer open to them. The secretive religious group that lives on the island invites Joe to stay with them on the island for a week to see how the community lives. That dreadful events occur on Pig Island seems confirmed by two pieces of evidence that Joe can check for himself: a dreadful smell apparent when the wind blows from that quarter, and decaying chunks of flesh that constantly drift from the island to the mainland.

RAVEN BLACK, Ann Cleeves, my rating 4.6
Set on Shetland. Magnus Tait, an elderly man living on his own, mentally slow, and once dominated by his mother, was thought by the islanders to have been responsible when a little girl disappeared a few years ago. Her body was never found. But now when Magnus's teenage neighbour Catherine Ross is found strangled, there are those who say that Tait must be the prime suspect, and that the police need look no further. The detective is Jimmy Perez, an islander himself, now living on Fair Isle, but he went to school on Shetland. A carefully constructed satisfying read. 4.6

THE RECKONING, Sue Walker, my rating 4.4
They buried three girls. They buried the killer. But did they bury the truth? In June 1973 the bodies of three missing teenagers were found on the tiny Scottish island of Fidra. And when his father was arrested for the murders, 11-year-old Miller McAllister's life fell apart.

Isolated by snow

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN, Marshall Browne, my rating 4.3
Just when things really can't get any worse, Aoki is sent by his superintendent to the Kamakura Inn, a ryokan in Hokkaido, to recuperate.The detective in Aoki is revived as he realises that the other guests at the ryokan have secrets to hide, and he wonders if he has been sent there intentionally. He remembers an unsolved mystery of the disappearance of a woman 7 years earlier, and realises that at least two of the other guests have connections to that case. When the ryokan is cut off from the world in a snow storm, this tale becomes a classic locked room mystery. The ryokan is a house of many secrets, built to hide as well as accommodate, and the tension grows as first of all the telephone, and then the lights fail.

THE SACRED CUT, David Hewson, my rating 4.8
For the first time in two decades, Rome is paralysed by a blizzard. And a gruesome discovery is made in the Pantheon, one of the city's most ancient and revered architectural treasures. Covered by soft snow is the body of an American tourist - her back horribly mutilated.

DISTURBED EARTH, Reggie Nadelsen, my rating 4.2
Winter 2003. War is looming and New York is paralysed by the worst blizzard in years. Artie Cohen is called in to investigate a case: a pile of blood-soaked children's clothes have been found on the beach in Brooklyn. Almost against his will, Artie finds himself drawn into a case that involves the death of a child and the unaccountable disappearance of another, all against the background of a city already stricken by fear.

On a train

THE MYSTERY OF THE BLUE TRAIN, Agatha Christie, my rating 4.5
When Ruth Van Aldin Kettering is found murdered on the Blue Train en route to her annual winter trip to the French Riviera, it is up to Hercule Poirot to discover if she was murdered because the famous jewel was in her possession or was she murdered by her husband or his mistress or was there yet another sinister motive.

THE EXCURSION TRAIN, Edward Marston, my rating 4.0
London 1852. A trainful of excited fans are delivered to the illegal prize fight between Mad Isaac and the Bargeman near Twyford. But one second class passenger does not leave the train. He has been garrotted en route. Inspector Robert Colbeck of the Detective Department of the Metropolitan Police at Scotland Yard, now known as the Railway Detective, after his success in the previous year, takes up the case.

THE VICTIM IN VICTORIA STATION, Jeanne M. Dams, my rating 3.9
American Dorothy Martin broke her ankle shortly after her second marriage. Her British husband is ex-policeman Alan Nesbitt much in demand by police forces around the world as a consultant, and in this book he is only a voice at the other end of the phone. Dorothy has to travel to London by train to see her specialist, and during the journey she talks to the young man in the opposite seat, who is the CEO of a software company. When they arrive at Victoria Station he appears to have fallen asleep, and when Dorothy tries to wake him she finds that he is very dead.

NEVER GO BACK, Robert Goddard, my rating 4.5
An old mate from Harry Barnett's RAF days is organising a 50th anniversary reunion in Scotland at Kilveen Castle where as young men they had taken part in a psychological experiment. But even before they arrive at the castle one of their group has disappeared and soon after they arrive another dies in strange circumstances.