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Published Apr 2011
368 pages
Genre: Mysteries
Publication Information
Acclaimed author David Hewson returns with this mesmerizing new thriller featuring Nic Costa and the detectives of Rome's Questura. This time Costa must solve a case with roots buried deep in one of the ancient city's most infamous episodes - a story of incest, murder, and martyrdom.
It's August in Rome, and Nic Costa's vacation is about to be cut short by a scream, a girl covered in blood, and a man lying dead in the Via Beatrice Cenci. It seems that Malise Gabriel, a scholar with an impressive list of enemies, stepped onto faulty scaffolding for a cigarette and fell to his death.
On the surface, it's no more than an unfortunate accident.
But the deeper Costa looks - into the facts that don't add up, into the haunted eyes of Gabriel's beautiful daughter, Mina, and into the mysterious links between the present and the past - the more he's haunted by disturbing parallels with a centuries-old crime: In 1599, Beatrice Cenci was beheaded by the Vatican for murdering her father, a man known for unthinkable sexual crimes. Does Mina's obsession with Beatrice intimate her own family's dark secrets, or is someone using her as a smoke screen for a far deadlier plan?
Soon another body is discovered and Nic comes to doubt his own first impressions. Something evil is circling Mina, her angry and silent mother, her runaway brother, and her family's checkered history in England, the United States, and Italy. And now that something is closing in fast for the kill.
In a novel that captures modern Rome in all its complexity, as well as its history of beauty and barbarity, genius and blindness, The Fallen Angel is David Hewson at his best - a twisting and twisted contest between innocence and evil.
"Starred Review. Readers will have a lot of fun peeling away the book's many layers, right down to the final, closing twist." - Publishers Weekly
"[T]he writing is superior, and the characters engage." - Kirkus Reviews
"Hewson presents an atmospheric portrait of a dark, corrupt Rome behind the jolly tourist facade, astutely mixing the historical and the present. This is the ninth in the Nic Costa series, and possibly the best." - The Times (UK)
"Hewson is ahead of the pack in this country-hopping band, mainly because his ambitions clearly stretch beyond the parameters of standard crime fiction." - Daily Express
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Hewson is the author of several travel books, at least six standalone novels and the Nic Costa series. He used to be a weekly columnist for the Sunday Times, but gave up journalism in 2005 to focus full time on his novels. He lives in Kent, England.
David originates from the North of England and did not travel abroad until he was 21. However he read about Italy and Greece at the library and grew up dreaming of the Mediterranean.
Rights for the Nic Costa series have been sold to a number of countries, but he is particularly proud of the fact that the series has been translated into Italian, "When you're a foreigner writing about their country, normally they won't touch you. They'll look at a book and say this is all wrong, so it's great that an Italian publisher should have ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to David Hewson's Website
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